Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — ROYAL AIR FORCE

Education Branch (Officers)

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for Air how many officers are at present serving in the Education Branch of the Royal Air Force; and how many of them are of air rank.

The Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Hugh Fraser): Seven hundred and twenty-five, of whom three hold air rank.

Mr. Johnson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that an advertisement appeared earlier this year in the Daily Telegraph inviting qualified teachers to join the Education Branch of the Royal Air Force, holding out as an inducement the prospect of advancement to air rank? Does he not feel, in view of the figures he has just given me, that there is some risk of their having been misled, in the same way that officers were misled when they were told that their prospects of promotion from squadron leader to wing commander were at least 50–50?

Mr. Fraser: I will certainly look at this point. On the whole, I think that there are pretty good promotion prospects in this branch. In fact, it is rather well off in officers of air rank, group captains and wing commanders. There is always the possibility of transferring at the age of 38 back to the civil education service and enjoying a pension from the Air Force of something over £400 a year.

Radiation Detection Posts

Mr. Mason: asked the Secretary of State for Air how many radiation detection posts have been built to date; and when he expects completion of the whole network.

Mr. H. Fraser: One thousand, three hundred and nineteen. About 98 per cent. of the total programme should be completed by the end of this year. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Public Building and Works expects the remainder to be completed early next year.

Mr. Mason: What is now the estimated total cost of building these radiation detection posts? What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman in mind for their maintenance? What success is he having in recruiting Royal Observer Corps personnel to man them?

Mr. Fraser: The total cost is about £2¼ million. I cannot without notice tell the hon. Gentleman the maintenance cost. I will write to him about that. As to manning, we obviously need more men. We are not fully up to strength. However, in an emergency we should be able to man these posts fully.

Thor Missile Sites

Mr. Mason: asked the Secretary of State for Air what progress is being made in the dismantling of the Thor missile sites; and on what date he expects the operation will be completed.

Mr. H. Fraser: The work is proceeding as planned, and should be completed by the end of the year.

Mr. Mason: What plans has the right hon. Gentleman in mind for these sites when they ate cleared? What future is planned for the trained Royal Air Force Thor Squadron?

Mr. Fraser: The sites vary. There are a number of them. There are a number of other Questions on the Order Paper on this very point. We shall retain some sites. We shall dispose of others. We have provision for absorbing the trained personnel into the rest of the Air Force. There is no real problem here. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have reduced recruiting thin year to a very low level, so there is no problem of redundancy.

Mr. Mason: Will the right hon. Gentleman keep in mind the desire of some hon. Gentlemen that some of these sites which may be near to built-up areas where unemployment still persists should be passed over to the Board of Trade for use as industrial sites?

Mr. Fraser: That is a matter for the Board of Trade. Other Government Departments will have first claim on such sites.

United States Air Force Bases

Mr. Frank Allaun: asked the Secretary of State for Air what consultations he has had recently with the Government of the United States of America regarding United States Air Force bases in Great Britain, with particular regard to the recent United States Air Force statement that their rundown is to be reversed.

Mr. H. Fraser: No such statement has been made. I was, however, consulted about the announcement which the United States authorities made last month that Air Force units in England were to be transferred from the command of the 17th Air Force in Germany to that of the 3rd Air Force in this country. No move of operational units is involved and the effect on United States Air Force manpower in this country is negligible.

Mr. Allaun: I thank the Minister for that Answer. Does it not involve, first, technical nonsense, and, secondly, the increased risk that our country will become very vulnerable and number one priority target in the event of a world war starting?

Mr. Fraser: No, I do not think either of those statements is true. It is merely a matter of command structure. No units have been moved to this country. It is merely the transferance of control from one American headquarters to another.

Mr. Paget: Does that mean that the air support of the N.A.T.O. Forces in Germany is now being based on Britain rather than on France?

Mr. Fraser: It was never based on France. It was based on Germany. It is a transfer of control from Germany to this country.

Mr. E. Johnson: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that the presence of the United States Air Force in this country not only strengthens our own defences but also does a certain amount to provide civilian employment?

Mr. Fraser: I quite agree.

Air Training Corps (1903 (Penge) Squadron)

Mr. Goodhart: asked the Secretary of State for Air what plans he has for rehousing the headquarters of the 1903 (Penge) Squadron of the Air Training Corps.

Mr. H. Fraser: Alternative plans for rehousing this squadron are still being considered, but I hope to reach a decision shortly.

Mr. Goodhart: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that this is a very go-ahead squadron with a very good record and that there is strong local feeling that it should be rehoused in the Territorial Army headquarters in Parish Lane?

Mr. Fraser: Yes. I will certainly bear that consideration in mind.

R.A.F. Station, Tangmere

Mr. Mulley: asked the Secretary of State for Air why he has decided to close Royal Air Force, Tangmere, as an operational station; what expenditure has been incurred in building works for the station, the Joint Services Language School, and married quarters in the last three years; how many civil servants and employees of civilian contractors are now employed at the station; and how many will be required in its new rôle.

Mr. H. Fraser: The decision was taken on grounds of economy. Over the last three years capital works expenditure has amounted to £125,000 for the station, £585 for the Joint Services Language School and £3,000 for the married quarters. At present there are 218 civil servants at Tangmere and I understand that the contractor has about 190 employees. A few civilians will probably still be required when the station assumes its new rôle, but the precise details have yet to be worked out.

Mr. Mulley: Was not this station designed to be a permanent station? At any rate, the employees there were so told. Is not the Minister a little concerned at the fact that over the last three years a considerable capital development for a small station of this sort has been carried out, but now on the grounds of economy it is decided to close it? Does


not the Minister pay some regard to the expenditure of capital and the loss this decision will obviously entail?

Mr. Fraser: As the hon. Gentleman knows, there has been the rundown of the Thor squadrons, and other movements inside the Air Force at other places have come up. If we had kept Tangmere, it would have entailed a capital expenditure of nearly £600,000.

Skybolt and Thor Missiles

Mr. Mulley: asked the Secretary of State for Air what reorganisation of personnel and stations is to be made consequential to the decisions not to acquire the Skybolt missile for the Royal Air Force and to take the Thor missile out of service; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. H. Fraser: The cancellation of Skybolt does not of itself call for any changes in our present organisation: Bomber Command will continue to provide the strategic deterrent until about 1970. The rundown of the Thor system will enable us to close a number of stations and will yield manpower savings of between 3,000 and 4,000 men.
Recruitment has been restricted where necessary to take account of this. The men released by the Thor rundown will be given suitable employment elsewhere in the Service.

Mr. Mulley: I thank the Secretary of State for that Answer. Can he not give us a little indication of his thoughts on the development of the Royal Air Force? Surely he is not now planning on exactly the same lines as when it was proposed that we should acquire Skybolt and when we had the Thor missile in use? Surely some recasting of the Air Force's personnel requirements is bound to flow from this situation, and possibly some new requirements in terms of equipment? Can he not give us some idea of the lines along which he is working?

Mr. Fraser: The hon. Gentleman has invited me to make a very long speech. I could speak for about half an hour on many of these points. The development of an armed Service, which is as flexible as the Air Force must be, is a continuous process.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Does not the Minister realise that the Prime Minister gave us to understand that when we spent large sums on providing Polaris for the Navy we would be compensated by a reduction in the Air Force? Does the Minister mean that we shall continue to spend large sums on the Air Force and large sums on the Navy at the same time?

Mr. Fraser: We propose to continue to maintain an independent deterrent here, and that is going to cost a great deal of money.

Maritime Reconnaissance Aircraft

Mr. McMaster: asked the Secretary of State for Air when he expects to formulate a requirement for a new maritime reconnaissance aircraft for Coastal Command to replace the Shackleton, as announced in this year's Defence White Paper.

Mr. H. Fraser: My Department is actively engaged on the formulation of this requirement, in close consultation with the Ministry of Aviation.

Mr. McMaster: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Can he bring these decisions forward, in view of the anxiety in the aircraft industry about unemployment and the importance to such firms a; Short Brothers and Harland of keeping design teams together in the national interest?

Mr. Fraser: I am aware of this problem, but I am glad to say that this year we have confirmed three major requirements for the Royal Air Force—the TSR2, the OR351 and the P1154.

Mr. Mulley: How long does the Secretary of State expect the Shackleton to remain in useful operational service? Will he take steps to speed up the decisions as to operational requirements for new aircraft, because one's recollection is that there has been an enormous gap from the time a project is started until an order is placed and then a period of about five years before the Royal Air Force gets the planes in actual squadron service? Is the Secretary of State doing something to shorten these very long periods?

Mr. Fraser: I am doing everything I can.

Aircrew (Recruiting)

Mr. Eden: asked the Secretary of State for Air what progress has been made in aircrew recruiting this year.

Mr. H. Fraser: Aircrew recruiting is going well. Applications for cadetships at Cranwell for the coming September entry have been some 17 per cent. higher than the comparable figure for 1962 and over 80 per cent. higher than that for 1961. Applications received during the first four months of the year for direct entry commissions are also above the comparable figures for either of the last two years. Quality is holding up well.

Mr. Mason: The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that Cmnd. 1936 said that recruiting of pilots was below the desired rates. It also said that there were deficiencies in other trades—in professionally qualified engineers, in scientists, and in technologists. What is he doing to get the necessary recruits for these grades?

Mr. Fraser: There again, we are not doing too badly. The Question is about aircrew. The Air Force is doing very well in its recruitment of aircrew at the moment.

Mr. Eden: Is there any substantial element of wastage immediately after training has taken place when men, having been trained, leave the R.A.F.?

Mr. Fraser: I should like notice of that Question, but I should have thought that it was very small.

Oral Answers to Questions — ROADS

Proposed Railway Closures

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of Transport how the additional road expenditure which will be necessitated by rail closures in country areas, is to be financed, in view of the fact that the rate burden in these areas is already heavy.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay): Any highway improvements that may prove to be necessary will be financed in the usual way, according to the category of road. This means that the greater part of the cost would fall on the Exchequer.

Mr. Digby: Is my hon. Friend aware that a great deal of the cost will fall on the local authority? In counties like Dorset the rates are simply not in a position to bear this. This affects very much the attitude of many parts of England towards the whole of the Beeching Plan. Will he consult his right hon. Friend with a view to getting a new Government statement on this very fundamental question?

Mr. Hay: We are at the moment engaged on the preliminary stages of discussions with highway authorities about classifications and the percentage grants. We ought to continue with these before my right hon. Friend is asked to make any further statement.

Mr. Costain: Would he consider saving the money by allowing rail buses to run on existing permanent ways, thus obviating the need for extending roads in country areas?

Mr. Hay: I hardly think that arises on this Question.

Mr. Strauss: Is not this an example of losses on the railways being passed over for local authorities to bear? Does the Parliamentary Secretary think that is right in principle?

Mr. Hay: I think there is a fallacy here. The right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members perhaps have forgotten that the local authority's own share of highway improvement costs receives support through the general grant and, in the great majority of cases, through the rate deficiency grant as well. All these things have to be taken into consideration, which we are doing in our consultations with the local authority associations.

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of Transport when he intends to publish a road plan to show the new roads and road improvements which will be necessitated by the proposed railway closures in rural areas.

Mr. Hay: We do not think it will be necessary or practicable to publish such a plan, but each proposal will be carefully examined from this particular point of view.

Mr. Digby: When can we have some evidence that something is being done and that this problem is being thought


about? This again is a very vital question to all areas like my own. We are losing eleven out of thirteen stations. Will my hon. Friend give serious thought to producing something to allay public apprehension?

Mr. Hay: My hon. Friend has accepted that the proposals which are contained in one of the appendices to the Beeching Plan will automatically become operative. As my right hon. Friend made clear in last week's debate, the intention is that these proposals as they are brought forward over a period of time by the Railways Board will be comprehensively examined, not only by the Government, but also by the transport users consultative committees. It is only when my right hon. Friend finally has to decide on each individual proposal that the question whether the road programme in that locality should be expedited or altered in some respects comes to the surface.

Mr. Mellish: If, in fact, rail closures are to take place, for whatever reason the Government may have, ought there not to be a road plan to show that the roads will be adequate to cope? Surely, it is very reasonable to say that supplementing the one plan there should be another showing the alternative?

Mr. Hay: As I said in my original Answer, we do not think that it is necessary, or that it would be practicable, to publish a plan of that kind. We have to judge each case on its merits at the time.

Mr. P. Browne: Would not my hon. Friend agree that a very considerable sum of money must be spent on improving the roads that lead to areas that have just been made development districts, from which the railway is now to be taken away?

Mr. Hay: That is a very much wider question than the one on the Order Paper, and I should prefer to see it put down before replying to it.

Traffic Congestion (New Fresh Wharf Area)

Sir D. Robertson: asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware of the traffic congestion in Lower Thames Street, Monument Street, Fish Street Hill, and adjacent streets in London while

vessels are, discharging and loading cargoes at New Fresh Wharf, and of the use of these streets for parking purposes; and what action he proposes to take to remedy the situation.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett): We believe that a comprehensive control of street parking would be the best solution to the special problems created here by the market and the docks. I understand that the Common Council is of the same view, and intends very shortly to apply for a parking meter Order for the area.

Sir D. Robertson: Why are ships of 10,000 tons allowed to discharge their cargoes on to old, narrow City streets at London Bridge, which must cause traffic chaos? And why is the City Corporation's car park which adjoins the New Fresh Wharf allowed to remain empty and unused each day from 11 a.m. onwards?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: With regard to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, we have not yet seen the Common Council's proposals but when we do, we will consider all their aspects, and the objections. We still think that a parking meter scheme is the best solution. As to the first part of the supplementary question, neither my right hon. Friend nor, I understand, the Port of London Authority, has any power to regulate the size of vessels using the Upper Pool.

Mr. Mellish: Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that many thousands of men get their livelihood on the River Thames? With great respect to motorists who use that part of the City, certain priorities should be given to those who live and earn their living on the waterfront.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: This goes beyond the question of the ordinary motorists. At present, important commercial traffic going to the docks is being held up.

Parking Meters, Fleet Street Area

Mr. Lubbock: asked the Minister of Transport when he gave his sanction to the installation of parking meters in the Fleet Street area.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: My right hon. Friend approved the application of the Common Council of the City of London on 24th August, 1962. The parking places Order was made on 28th August. The controlled parking scheme came into operation on 26th November.

Mr. Lubbock: Is it not rather curious that the Minister of Transport should agree to an application such as this, which makes parking in the Fleet Street area more difficult when, at the same time, many of my constituents who are journalists are being encouraged to bring their cars to the centre of London, making the congestion more difficult, by the withdrawal of the late-night trains they have used?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: One cannot really compare the two things, but the whole scheme appears to be working very well. Traffic is moving much more freely, and access for loading, and so on, has improved, but, as in most parts of London, the amount of utilisation of the meters is very high.

Road Accidents (Easter Holiday Period)

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Transport whether, in connection with the inquiry to be made into the causes of fatal and other road accidents during the Easter holiday period, he will give directions that special attention should be given to the extent to which each accident was caused by the lack of adequate and modern roads.

Mr. Hay: The analysis of accidents over the Easter holiday will be based on the police reports on each fatal and serious accident. These reports give a great deal of useful information, including, where appropriate, information about abnormal road conditions at the site of the accident, but they could not identify every case in which the state of the road contributed to the accident.

Sir B. Janner: Apart from anything else, is not the Minister aware that there is considerable anxiety that there are not sufficient roads—that sufficient has not been planned for our roads—to enable traffic to be carried in such a way that these accidents will not occur? Is not his Government carrying out a

cheeseparing road policy, and is not our road system far behind that in other countries in Europe and elsewhere?

Mr. Hay: When I saw the Question on the Order Paper, I rather suspected that the hon. Member would be on that line rather than on the line of the Question itself. The truth is that we have been, and are, spending far more on roads than was spent in the years immediately after the war. If, in fact, the party opposite had given priority, as it should have done, to the improvement of our road system, many of our present difficulties would not have arisen. Nevertheless, we are getting on very fast indeed with an expanded road programme.

Sir B. Janner: But does not the hon. Gentleman agree that fatal and other accidents have been due to a very considerable extent to the fact that the Government's road policy is bad and insufficient? What does he intend to do about it?

Mr. Hay: I do not accept that at all. I do not accept it in the slightest degree. The truth is that our road system is being improved fast. The road casualty figures last year were down on those of the year before—and, indeed, on those for the year before that. We take no particular credit for that, but we are very glad of it. But it is a falsification to pretend that the high accident rate in this country is due to bad roads. It is due to a lot of other things as well.

Mr. P. Williams: Is my hon. Friend aware that those of us who occasionally ride round the country as well as just using our railway warrants to go home at weekends, notice an improvement in the roads? If I may make a comment from the North-East, we are thoroughly grateful for the improvements to the A.1, and hope that they will still go on.

Ipswich-Blythburgh Road (Dual Carriageway)

Sir H. Harrison: asked the Minister of Transport whether he will now state the date by which there will be a dual carriageway on A.12 between Ipswich and Blythburgh.

Mr. Hay: We hope to include a scheme for dual carriageways between


Ipswich and the southern end of the Woodbridge by-pass in the next phase of our trunk road programme. North of this towards Blythburgh dual carriageways are not justified.

Sir H. Harrison: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his impending promotion. May I conclude from his reply that he will recommend to his right hon. Friend that there shall be no closure of the East Suffolk railway line until this dual carriageway is built?

Mr. Hay: While I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his kind personal reference to me, I am sorry that I cannot give him the assurance for which he asks.

School Entrances (Car Parking)

Mr. Wall: asked the Minister of Transport what steps he has taken, in conjunction with local authorities, to prevent the parking of cars adjacent to school entrances; and what further action he will take.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: In the Highway Code drivers are advised not to park at school entrances. If at any school this advice is not heeded, the local authority may impose a specific prohibition of waiting, indicated by a standard traffic sign. In the London Traffic Area, where my right hon. Friend is the traffic authority, a carriageway marking with the words "school entrance" has been used with some success. We are now prepared to consider proposals for the use of this marking outside London.

Mr. Wall: I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for that reply, but is he aware that, for example, in the City of Westminster most of the school entrances are completely obscured by parked cars? Will he look into the matter again and make serious representations to the local authorities to the effect that the entrances should be adequately marked and cars kept away?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: We were aware of that. This is really the reason why we have carried out the experiment in the London Traffic Area with a carriageway marking rather on the lines of a bus stop box. We hope that it will prove successful.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Will my hon. and gallant Friend bear in mind that he has a committee on road signs now sitting and that he should, before he introduces any new road sign, at least consult that committee or see what report it makes on the subject?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: We shall certainly look into that. We felt that, meanwhile, the need for some action was urgent.

Bus and Railway Termini

Sir S. Langford-Holt: asked the Minister of Transport what steps will be taken, in cases where, under the Beeching proposals, railway passengers will transfer to bus services, to see that for this transfer bus termini are sited near to railway termini.

Mr. Hay: We would expect the transport users consultative committee to take account of the location of bus stopping places when considering alternative bus services. Before deciding on the terms of our consent to a passenger closure proposal, we shall have regard to any views it may express on the point, and we will see that these are brought to the attention of the Traffic Commissioners, who are responsible for licensing bus services, in appropriate cases.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that if, quite logically, he is trying to make the bus services an extension of the railway services, this purpose will not be served if, as in my constituency, the distance between railway terminus and bus terminus is anything up to one mile?

Mr. Hay: I tried to make clear in my Answer that the whale matter is for my right hon. Friend to consider in the light of advice which the transport users consultative committee will give. Obviously, one of the factors which the committee will have in mind in a case like this is the existence of a stopping place reasonably convenient and adjacent to the railway station.

Mr. Snow: Should not the Ministry have already started negotiations or discussions with the motor vehicle industry in order to secure designs which will permit the carriage of passengers'


luggage which can be put out fairly conveniently at stations?

Mr. Hay: That is a bit wide of a question about bus stopping places.

Mr. J. Wells: Will my hon. Friend address his mind, not necessarily now but as soon as he can, to the actual words of the Question which deal with termini rather than stopping places? His answer implied that he was thinking about intermediate stopping places, but many hon. Members are most concerned about bus termini being remote from railway termini.

Mr. Hay: I looked at the wording of the Question, but I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury (Sir J. Langford-Holt) was concerned about places where people could get on or off a bus near a station, whether they be termini or just stopping places.

Mr. Snow: With their luggage.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Will my hon. Friend accept that "reasonably adjacent"—I think that those were his words—is not good enough? If people are to get off a railway train and then use buses as an extension of the railway, the bus terminus must be immediately adjacent, not reasonably adjacent.

Mr. Hay: All these are, obviously, matters for the transport users consultative committees to consider in relation to the particular proposals before them and on which they will give advice to my right hon. Friend.

Motorways and Trunk Roads (Trees and Shrubs)

Mr. Dance: asked the Minister of Transport what plans he has for planting trees and shrubs along motorways and new trunk roads to help them to harmonise with the surrounding country, to act as windbreaks, and to make a contribution to reafforestation.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Planting of trees and shrubs to integrate the new motorways and trunk roads with the surrounding countryside is undertaken in accordance with the recommendations of my right hon. Friend's

Advisory Committee on the Landscape Treatment of Trunk Roads. Planting is selective and is not intended to make a major contribution to reafforestation. We do not propose to plant trees as windbreaks.

Mr. Dance: Why is my hon. and gallant Friend so averse to these windbreaks? Anybody who uses the motorways knows that conditions can be extremely dangerous when there is a high wind. I have been trying to persuade him to agree to ordinary windbreaks, and I now put the suggestion of these screens. Will he reconsider the matter and accept that the three benefits mentioned in my Question could be quite substantial?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Our advice is that the use of trees as windbreaks is not really practicable for both engineering and amenity reasons. To be effective, the trees would need to be planted two or three deep throughout the exposed length. The maintenance of the trees would be costly and gaps would cause dangerous local air currents. I agree with my hon. Friend that cross winds can be dangerous on these roads, but we think that the proper remedy is for drivers to adjust their driving to allow for this.

Mr. G. Wilson: Does my hon. and gallant Friend accept that experience on the German autobahnen is that, if one plants too many trees alongside the road, there are dangerous soporific effects on drivers travelling long distances at night?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I have heard of this but I have had no personal experience of it.

Mr. Bockway: How does the hon. and gallant Gentleman reconcile his Answer with the reply which I have had from his office that trees will be planted along the M.4 in the neighbourhood of Slough both for purposes of beauty and amenity and to serve as windbreaks, and that there will be discussions with the parks superintendent of Slough?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: So far as they may serve as windbreaks, that is incidental. The policy for landscape treatment is to plant indigenous trees and shrubs at selected places to help the


roads to merge into the general countryside. The Committee aims also to emphasise pleasant views and screen those which are unpleasant.

County Surveyors' Society (Report)

Mr. Wainwright: asked the Minister of Transport what consideration he has given to the recommendation of the County Surveyors' Society, a copy of which has been sent to him, that the Government should plan to build, in addition to the 1,000 miles of motorway by the 1970s, a further 1,700 miles of first-class highways; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Hay: We are awaiting the views of the County Councils' Association on the Society's report. We should then be willing to discuss it with them both in the light of our own studies of future highway needs.

Mr. Wainwright: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that the opinion of experts is that road congestion in this country costs at least £300 million a year? How does he expect the country to put into effect the Beeching proposals if the congestion we have on the roads today is allowed to continue?

Mr. Hay: The Government are spending about £200 million a year on road improvements, which, as I said earlier, contrasts with what was spent by the Labour Government. I think that we have nothing to be ashamed of in our road programmes. The County Surveyors' Society proposed in its memorandum a very substantial increase in the road programme to the extent, I understand, of about £1,000 million, but without any indication of how the money was to be found.

Mr. Wainwright: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that the sum of money recommended by the society must be found if road congestion is to be reduced? Further, is not he aware that these proposals were recommended before the Beeching proposals came out? Is not much more required now?

Mr. Hay: The Government are fully aware of those views, but we have to measure what we should like to do and what we really need to do against what we can afford to do. I believe that we

are doing pretty well at the moment, although no Minister of Transport is ever satisfied with the size of the road programme.

Mr. R. W. Elliott: Does my hon. Friend agree that the adoption of the Beeching proposals will mean that many C licence holders will find the railways once again reliable and will remove their C licence vehicles from the roads, thereby making less necessary a greater extension of the road system?

Mr. Hay: I think that there is something in what my hon. Friend says.

Road Junction, Darfield ("Halt" Sign)

Mr. Wainwright: asked the Minister of Transport if he will now give his decision in relation to the request from the Darfield Urban District Council for the reinstallation of a "Halt" sign at the junction of the B.6273 and A.635 roadways at Darfield.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: There has been a marked reduction in the accident rate at this junction since additional carriageway markings were put down in September last year and we see no reason to alter the decision that a "Halt" sign here is not justified.

Mr. Wainwright: Does not the hon. and gallant Gentleman realise that the accidents which occurred at this crossroads were due to strangers and not to residents in and about that village? Every person who lives in and around Darfield and who drives a car knows these crossroads and always stops at this junction. I therefore think that the Minister should reconsider his decision and replace the "Halt" sign which was there in 1958.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: The fact remains that accidents have gone down considerably since additional markings were placed there. We think it most important not to debase the currency of the "Halt" sign, which is a very important sign, or, for that matter, the double white lines. That is why we would be reluctant to establish a "Halt" sign at this junction.

King's Lynn By-pass

Mr. Bullard: asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the possible changes in the transport system of East


Anglia suggested in the Beeching Report, he will now proceed with the construction of the trunk road section of the King's Lynn by-pass.

Mr. Hay: When the effects of the particular railway proposals which are relevant have been more closely assessed, we will consider whether any change in the relative priority of this scheme is justified.

Mr. Bullard: Is my hon. Friend aware that the roads and streets of King's Lynn provide the only means whereby traffic from the North and the Midlands can enter and leave East Anglia and that people who have to do business in the town get very fed up with the streets being congested for very long periods? Will he try to speed up this matter as much as he can? If he has in mind placing schemes where there is unemployment, will he remember that employment in East Anglia is no better than it ought to he and certainly justifies action on this scheme?

Mr. Hay: I note what my hon. Friend says about unemployment in East Anglia. With regard to this by-pass, when the railway proposals which are relevant are known, we can come to a more conscious decision about priorities.

Major Road Reconstruction, Leyton

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Transport what is the present timetable for major road reconstruction through the Borough of Leyton, particularly that affecting Gainsborough Road and the Green Man area.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Reconstruction of the junction at the Green Man, Leytonstone, is likely to begin in 1964. I cannot say when the construction of the Eastern Avenue extension between the Green Man and Ruckholt Road will begin.

Mr. Sorensen: Does not the hon. and gallant Gentleman appreciate that congestion in this area of Leyton is becoming increasingly acute and that everything should be done to expedite the development of roads to meet this increased congestion? Has any attention been paid to the effect of this road reconstruction on the householders in the neighbourhood, and. if so, what kind of attention?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: We are aware of the congestion. The necessary order fixing the line of the road has been made long in advance of construction because of the problem of rehousing the families of some 300 houses which will have to be demolished.

Road Programme

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Transport, in view of varying estimates of the increased number of motor vehicles of all types of driving licences held by 1970, what is the estimate of his Department; on what basis the estimate rests; whether, in view of a substantial revision of the previous estimated population in 1970, his long-term policy in respect of road transport is being revised; and to what extent this revision has been or is being related to road and traffic problems in the areas of the present borough of Leyton and the prospective amalgamated borough inclusive of Leyton.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I am sending the hon. Member a copy of the Hall Report which gives much of the information he seeks. It has been our practice in formulating the road programme to take account of the foreseeable growth in road traffic and we will continue to do so. The position in particular areas must be considered in the light of their individual circumstances.

Mr. Sorensen: Has the rather impressive increased estimate of the population in future been taken into complete consideration?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Yes, Sir. The estimates for both goods and passenger transport took account of the most recent forecasts for the population, but in forecasting the number of cars the Hall Group also considered the relationship between income and car ownership and American experience on the subject. This has to be taken into account in addition to the population question.

Mr. Mellish: Will the Parliamentary Secretary note that there is a genuine desire on both sides of the House to have much more detail about the Government's long-term planning? While we know population trends and something of the likely increase in the number of motor vehicles, we are not sure exactly how


the money which the Government keep talking about will be spent. Is is not right that my hon. Friend should ask to be given some idea of how the Government see the position in 1970? Before I sit down, I am sure that we should all like to congratulate the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend on being promoted to the office of Civil Lord of the Admiralty.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I am not sure that I am entitled to reply on behalf of my hon. Friend in respect of the last part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question.
We recognise that this is a perfectly proper Question, and I have done my best to answer it. We shall take into account the various points raised in the Question.

Oral Answers to Questions — SHIPBUILDING

Finance and Credit Facilities

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Transport what finance and credit facilities are afforded to overseas shipowners who order their ships in the United Kingdom; and if he will offer the same facilities to British owners to assist the shipbuilding industry which is now in a difficult situation.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Finance for overseas shipowners ordering new ships in this country is arranged between the buyer, the supplier and the financial institutions which provide credit. The Export Credits Guarantee Department helps as appropriate with credit insurance.
The E.C.G.D. protects suppliers from risks which do not generally apply to home orders, and I do not think that these facilities would help British owners to place orders here.

Mr. Awbery: Could not our British shipowners be put on the same basis as everyone else? As 400,000 tons of shipping is now being constructed abroad for British shipowners, are those British shipowners getting a subsidy, or encouragement of any sort, from foreign firms to send their orders abroad?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I do not think that is entirely so. The number of British orders going abroad was relatively small during the past twelve

months—certainly those from genuine British owners rather than owners whose ships are registered under the British flag. I do not think that one can generalise because, with home orders, so much depends on the credit-worthiness of the buyer. British owners may find that cheaper sources of finance are available. For instance, they can borrow from the bank at 1 per cent. above Bank Rate.

Mr. P. Williams: Will my hon. and gallant Friend agree that a positioin seems to have arisen where, through the operation of the E.C.G.D., finance is provided for foreign owners at a preferential and advantageous rate over that provided for lime owners? This is really a strange and difficult situation to explain to shipowners and shipyard workers, who find it difficult to understand the reasons for providing finance for foreign owners but not for home owners?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I am aware of that point, but the purpose of the City scheme and the insurance facilities available is to enable British shipbuilders to capture their share of foreign orders. We are not seeking to lead a credit race—we cannot afford that—but, the foreign ships will be built in any case, and we are helping our own shipyards to secure the orders.

Scrap-and-Build Scheme

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Minister of Transport why he will not adopt a scrap-and-build scheme.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: We have not firmly ruled out this possibility, but the arguments against such a scheme are stronger than is generally realised. The position is very different from that which prevailed between the wars.

Mr. Williams: Will the Parliamentary Secretary recognise that, whilst I am not particularly an advocate of this proposition, the important thing now is that the Government should come to a conclusion and express their view publicly? I believe that at the moment orders are being held up pending a decision by the Government on whether or not to adopt this scheme. Therefore, will the Government publicly announce, in the shortest possible time, whether or not they support such a scheme as this?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: We hope to publish our decision at the earliest possible moment.

Mr. Strauss: Has there been any request by the shipping industry generally for the adoption of such a scheme, or is the industry very divided on the merits of the scheme?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: The Shipbuilding Conference and the trade unions concerned in the industry have both asked for a scrap-and-build scheme on more than one occasion.

Mr. McMaster: When considering this scheme, will my hon. and gallant Friend bear in mind the social consequences of heavy unemployment in the shipbuilding areas, particularly in Northern Ireland?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Yes, Sir. We are deeply aware of that.

Sir L. Ropner: Is not my hon. and gallant Friend aware that the shipping industry has on more than one occasion expressed a complete disapproval of the introduction of a scrap-and-build scheme? Could he not, therefore, announce that this scheme will not be brought into effect?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I am not in a position to make an announcement today, but I am aware of the point made by my hon. and gallant Friend. That, indeed, was one of the things I had in mind when I said in my original Answer that the arguments against such a scheme are stronger than are generally realised.

Demand

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Transport what steps he is taking to promote the expansion of demand for shipping, in view of the number of empty shipbuilding berths on the Clyde.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Expansion of shipping depends more than anything else on expansion of world trade, and the Government are constantly trying to promote this.

Mr. Bence: Having regard to the recent fiscal inducements given to the development districts to encourage industry to expand there, will the hon. and gallant Gentleman consider giving an inducement to the British Mercantile Marine

to enable it to take advantage of the present shortage of work in the shipyards and to encourage the placing of orders with British shipbuilders?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: That is one of the things which we are considering, but I must repeat that the only long-term remedy for the present state of affairs is to secure a revival in world trade and a reduction of the present surplus of ships.

Mr. Fernyhough: Apart from the state of world trade, is not British shipping severely affected by flag discrimination? What steps are the Government taking to end this, the biggest stumbling-block facing the British shipping industry today?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: This is a little wide of the original Question. I do not accept that it is the biggest stumbling-block, although it is an important stumbling-block. As regards the steps being taken, I remind the hon. Gentleman of the agreed resolution which was published after a meeting on 15th March with the nine other principal maritime Powers in Europe. We have great hopes of reaching international agreement.

Sir L. Ropner: Is the Minister of Transport considering any means by which British shipping could be put on a level of parity with the fleets of other nations, nearly all of which receive a subsidy, either direct or indirect, or are subject to flag discrimination, trade reservation, and so on?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: As regards flag discrimination and similar restrictions imposed by other Governments, we do our best both by diplomatic representation and, more recently, as I have said, by efforts to reach international agreement to control them. I can only say that we should be very reluctant to embark upon a shipping subsidy.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRANSPORT

Minibuses and Omnicoaches

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware that minibuses and omnicoaches which convey twelve passengers, because of their structure, do not come within the public service


vehicle category and therefore do not need a licence as do other passenger carrying vehicles; and what steps are being taken to bring about uniformity.

Mr. Hay: Under the Road Traffic Act, 1960, any vehicle adapted to carry twelve passengers must have a public service vehicle licence if it is carrying them for hire or reward. Structure does not affect the matter.

Mr. Awbery: Does it not appear that there is a difference between the taxi licence and the public vehicle licence, and that these minibuses come between the two? They do the work of the public service vehicle and the work of the taxi, and there is nothing to prevent them doing so because there is no special licence for them. Will the hon. Gentleman look into the matter?

Mr. Hay: With respect, I do not think that it needs to be looked into. There is a clear distinction between the hackney carriage licence—the taxi licence—and the public service vehicle licence. The rules for the latter are contained in the Road Traffic Act. If the hon. Gentleman would find it helpful, I will get my Department to write to him fully, explaining what the differences are.

Mr. Awbery: What about the licence for the vehicle carrying ten passengers?

Mr. Hay: It depends on whether the passengers are carried for hire and reward and, further, whether they are carried on separate fares. As it is a somewhat complicated matter, perhaps I had better write to the hon. Gentleman.

Driving Instructors

Mr. Spriggs: asked the Minister of Transport if he will give separate figures of road traffic deaths and injuries for each year since 1955 in the United Kingdom; and, in view of those deaths and injuries, what qualifications he will lay down in his regulations made under Section 23 of the Road Traffic Act 1962 for professional driving instructors.

Mr. Hay: With permission I will circulate the figures in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
We are considering what qualifications a driving instructor should have to obtain registration under Section 23 of the 1962 Act, and my right hon. Friend will announce them as soon as possible. While

we believe that better tuition will help to raise driving standards generally, I would remind the hon. Member that many accidents result from drivers ignoring safe principles even after they have been properly taught.

Mr. Spriggs: When the Parliamentary Secretary and his right hon. Friend consider what is to be done, will they take into consideration the 21,515 people seriously injured in the last three months of 1962, and the 1,949 people who were killed in road traffic accidents in the same months?

Mr. Hay: Yes, Sir. I can assure the hon. Member and the House that these and similar figures are always in the mind of my right hon. Friend.

Following, are the figures:


ROAD CASUALTIES IN GREAT BRITAIN—1955 TO 1962


—
Killed
Seriously injured
Slightly injured
Total


1955
5,526
62,106
200,290
267,922


1956
5,367
61,455
201,138
267,960


1957
5,550
63,706
204,602
273,858


1958
5,970
69,166
224,631
299,767


1959
6,520
80,672
246,261
333,453


1960
6,970
84,443
256,138
347,551


1961
6,908
84,936
257,923
349,767


1962
6,709
83,915
251,072
341,696

Road Safety Training

Sir Richard Pilkington: asked the Minister of Transport how many boroughs run road safety training and instructional courses.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Three hundred and two boroughs have allocated funds for road safety training in the current financial year, but I have no information about the extent to which other boroughs may be sponsoring training schemes.

Sir Richard Pilkington: Is my hon. and gallant Friend aware that the training courses given to all road users by the Accident Prevention Committee in the Borough of Poole have resulted in the lowest number of fatal casualties for sixteen years? Is not this a very great achievement, and will my hon. and gallant Friend induce the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give further money to provide for an extension of these schemes?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: We are, indeed, glad to hear from my hon. Friend that the accident rate at Poole has been so much reduced, and I am sure that the many road safety training schemes carried out in the borough have contributed to that reduction. As regards the second part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, the Exchequer contribution towards the cost of training schemes run by local authorities is made by way of general grant.

Mr. Snow: Will the Parliamentary Secretary consult his right hon. Friend the Minister of Education to see whether these boroughs are getting the fullest possible co-operation from the schools in this campaign? I do no wish to be contentious, but in view of the anticipated increase in road casualties if the Beeching Plan is implemented, will the hon. and gallant Gentleman draw to the attention of his colleagues the importance of the fullest financial support to increase consideration of this problem?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I do not accept that implementation of the Beeching Plan will result in any increase at all in road casualties. As to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, we keep in close touch with the Ministry of Education on this subject. I quite agree with him.

Cumbernauld

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Transport what steps he is taking to increase transport facilities for the new town of Cumbernauld.

Mr. Hay: So far as I am aware, the provision of transport facilities for Cumbernauld has in general kept pace with the demand.

Mr. Bence: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that his proposition that transport facilities are keeping pace with the demand is not likely to stand for long? Will he assure us that the progress to which he refers will be continued by a refusal to accede to the proposal in the Beeching Report to close Cumbernauld station?

Mr. Hay: No, Sir. If, and when, the proposal comes forward from the Railways Board, then, as my right hon.
Friend made clear in the debate last week, there will be a very full examination of the matter by the transport users consultative committee and, subsequently, by himself. All the issues vis-ávis Cumbernauld which the hon. Gentleman has in mind will be fully in my right hon. Friend's mind.

Lorries (Dimensions)

Sir Richard Pilkington: asked the Minister of Transport what reply he has had from interested organisations regarding the proposal that lorries should be permitted greater dimensions than is the rule at present.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: The proposals have been welcomed in many quarters. Some modifications have been suggested, and some organisations have expressed the view that larger vehicles may prove detrimental to road safety. We are now considering all the views expressed.

Sir Richard Pilkington: Is my hon. and gallant Friend aware that there are many lorries on the roads which are already too big? Does not he agree that these large lorries cause more congestion than any other single factor and therefore cause accidents on the road? Will he think about this again? To have lorries bigger than those at present on the roads would be a very retrograde step.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I assure my hon. Friend that all the opinions and suggestions which have reached my right hon. Friend will be very carefully considered, and the whole problem will be reassessed before we reach the stage of making regulations.

Mr. Strauss: Parliamentary opinion on this matter, which may be very strong indeed, has not yet expressed itself, but I am sure that very large numbers of hon. Members feel that to increase the size of these lorries would be wholly wrong and would cause a very large number of additional accidents.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: We shall note what the right hon. Gentleman has said.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Will my hon. and gallant Friend undertake to make a statement in this House before any decision is arrived at?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I will bear that in mind. I would rather not give an undertaking at this moment.

Mr. McBride: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman consider the damaging effect of traffic of this nature on roads which are inadequately constructed for such traffic? Is he aware of the serious financial position which this proposal will create for local authorities, particularly in Wales?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: That is certainly one of the factors which have to be considered.

Traffic Lights, London Area

Mr. Shepherd: asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware of the extent to which motor vehicles, and public service vehicles in particular, pass traffic lights al red in the London area; and what steps are being taken to bring to an end this practice.

Mr. Hay: We are aware that drivers engage in this dangerous practice in London, as well as elsewhere. But neither we nor the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police have any evidence that the practice is increasing, or that public service vehicles offend more than other vehicles.
The measures which, as my right hon. Friend announced last week, are to be introduced on 29th May, including provision for increased fines and disqualification for disobeying traffic signals, will, I hope, have a salutary effect.

Mr. Shepherd: Does not my hon. Friend realise that first he will have to catch the offenders? What is being done by the police, in view of their relief from other traffic duties, to keep a more careful watch on this point? Is there the possibility of some mechanical device which will register the offence mentioned in the Question?

Mr. Hay: Catching offenders is not actually one of the duties of my right hon. Friend. He makes the regulations, but it is for the police to carry them out. I think that my hon. Friend should put that question to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.

Mr. Strauss: Has the Parliamentary Secretary any evidence to support the suggestion in the Question that public service vehicles are greater offenders in

this respect than any other form of vehicle?

Mr. Hay: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman was not listening with his usual care to what I said in the Answer. If I may repeat it, I said that we have no evidence that public service vehicles offend more than other vehicles.

Motorists (Eyesight)

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Transport how many persons have so far been convicted under Section 41 of the Road Traffic Act, which makes it an offence for a person to drive a motor vehicle whilst his eysight is such that he cannot comply with the requirements prescribed under the principal Act; and whether he is satisfied that the machinery for preventing persons from driving with uncorrected defective eyesight is working satisfactorily.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I think that the hon. Member has in mind Section 42. I am informed that separate figures for convictions under this section are not available. We are satisfied that present legislation for preventing people with defective eyesight from driving and the way it operates are reasonably adequate, but my right hon. Friend reviews the position from time to time.

Sir B. Janner: In view of the accidents which have occurred, will an investigation take place fairly soon, because it is extremely important that people who drive should have the right eyesight qualifications to enable them to drive in a manner which is not dangerous to the public?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I agree. It may well be that the present eyesight test should be made more stringent. We propose to consider this in the context of the general review of medical standards for drivers, but, meanwhile, police officers have the power to require an eyesight test if they are suspicious and the courts have power to send people to prison for up to three months or fine them £50 if they disregard this Section of the Act.

Oral Answers to Questions — RAILWAYS

Leeds City and Central Stations

Mr. A. Roberts: asked the Minister of Transport ii he will give his sanction


to the application made to him for authorisation of capital expenditure on the amalgamation of the Leeds City and Central stations.

Mr. Hay: Works costing some £377,000 have already been carried out at Leeds City Station. My right hon. Friend has been asked to authorise further expenditure of £838,342 there, and of this he has approved £273,000 for urgent works. His general approval has also been sought for comprehensive rationalisation proposals for the West Riding area, which would include amalgamation of the City and Central Stations. My right hon. Friend hopes shortly to be able to reach conclusions on the rationalisation proposals, and on the capital scheme before him.

Mr. Roberts: Will the hon. Gentleman expedite this work as much as possible? Is he aware that the Central Station is rather antiquated and that the toilet facilities—this is no reflection on the staff—are disgusting? Will he carry on with the work as quickly as possible?

Mr. Hay: We have been looking very carefully at this proposal of the British Railways Board and the North-Eastern Region. We have just received additional information for which we have been waiting, and I hope that it will be possible for my right hon. Friend to announce a decision fairly soon.

Closed Branch Lines (Tracks)

Mr. Hayman: asked the Minister of Transport whether he will give a general direction in the national interest to the Railways Board that no further removal of rail tracks, resulting from closure of branch lines, shall take place before the next General Election.

Mr. Hay: No, Sir. But if, after the necessary consultations, my right hon. Friend concludes that the retention of the track is desirable in the public interest, he can make this a condition of his agreement to a particular passenger closure proposal.

Mr. Hayman: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that a conference in Cornwall recently decided to put forward this proposition in respect of Cornish branch lines?

Mr. Hay: Yes, Sir. Every case must be looked at on its individual merits. Obviously the Railways Board will not propose to recover the track, pull it up, and dispose of the land if it sees that there is a continued need for freight services along it or that some future development may involve continuation of the railway services generally.

Mr. Hayman: Will the Parliamentary Secretary and his right hon. Friend bear in mind that there is not very long between now and the General Election and that it would be bad to take an irreversible step in the interval?

Mr. Hay: I should have hoped that there was no great significance in the date of the General Election in the context of this Question.

POLARIS SUBMARINES (CONTRACTS)

The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:

Mr. ATKINS: To ask the Civil Lord of the Admiralty whether it has yet been decided to which shipyards the building of the Polaris submarines will be allocated.

The Civil Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. C. Ian Orr-Ewing): Subject to satisfactory contract arrangements to be concluded, Messrs. Vickers Armstrongs (Barrow) will construct two Polaris submarines and provide lead yard services. The second firm, who will also construct two submarines, will be Messrs Cammell Laird, of Birkenhead.
The decision to place the contracts with these two firms was taken only after weighing all the factors most carefully.

Mr. Atkins: Can my hon. Friend say what were the considerations which led him to choose Cammell Laird? Is it the case that, as a result of this decision, Scotts, of Clydeside, will have a better chance of getting the orders for the four Oberon class submarines for the Commonwealth of Australia?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: The considerations which led to our choosing Cammell Laird were, first, that it was a rather larger yard and we therefore felt that it might be able to keep to the very strict timetable necessary in this project; secondly,


that it had rather more of the capital facilities which were needed; and, thirdly, that it offered rather better financial conditions.
I do not think that I can comment on the second part of my hon. Friend's question. It might well be so.

Mr. Short: Will the hon. Gentleman use his good offices to ensure that as many components as possible for the submarines to be built in Barrow will be made in the Newcastle factory of Vickers Armstrong, where there is now a great deal of redundancy? Is he aware that this is a process which has been followed with other orders in Barrow and might well be followed in this case?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: We will certainly try to see that sub-contracts are placed in other areas, and particularly in Scotland.

Mr. J. Henderson: Is the Civil Lord aware of the very great disappointment which will be felt in Clydeside and Glasgow particularly, and in Scotland generally, at the by-passing of the Clyde for this work? Is he aware that there is an abundance of skilled labour, and very heavy unemployment, on Clydeside? In view of the statements of many prominent Ministers about the Government's determination to decrease unemployment in, and improve the economy of, Scotland, does he think that by-passing the Clyde and Scotland is in any way implementing those promises?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I have announced successive measures which we have been able to provide in Scotland. We are making Rosyth the refitting yard for Polaris submarines, which will employ an extra 400 men; we are making Faslane the operating base for Polaris submarines, and during the constructional period we shall employ between 500 and 1,000 more people there; and the total amount to be spent there is between £20 million and £25 million; and in Scotland no less than £55 million is being spent on warship orders placed with Clydeside firms. That surely shows that Scotland has done well in general out of the naval programme and particularly out of the Polaris programme. This is only a reflection of what every Government Department is trying to do for unemployment in Scotland.

Dr. Dickson Mahon: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that it is in the national interest that there should be a distribution of the technical knowledge and skill required for building nuclear propelled ships, whether for peace or war? If he does, would he accept that there is a case for considering the hunter-killer submarine programme with a view to trying to locate the building of nuclear ships in rivers such as the Clyde?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: Yes, Sir. I would agree that in the long term it would probably be desirable to spread the knowledge of this new technology of nuclear propulsion widely, but here we are concerned with a short crash programme to provide Britain with an independent deterrent, and that is why it is necessary to concentrate it in two areas.

Commander Kerans: Can my hon. Friend say what further measures he can take to increase employment in the North-East? Is he aware that this announcement is a disappointment to the North-East? Can he do something to help the shipbuilding industry there?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: I am well aware of the anxieties in the shipbuilding industry in the North-East and we have arranged with Vickers, at Barrow, that it should transfer the order for the construction of one new Leander frigate from Barrow across to its Tyneside firm.

Mr. Lawson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that one-third of the shipbuilding capacity of Britain is concentrated in Scotland and that that should be kept in mind when he talks about how much shipbuilding is being done in Scotland for the Admiralty? Will he also bear in mind that ordering this important submarine building elsewhere than in Scotland when the danger point is located in Scotland, because the base is centred there, will be regarded in Scotland with antagonism?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: Many Scottish people who have never been afraid to bear their burden of the defence of this country will welcome what I have said.

Mr. N. Pannell: While keenly regretting the impending departure of my hon. Friend from the office which he has served with such distinction, may I ask him whether the decision which he has announced and which will be warmly


applauded on Merseyside is an indication of improved labour relations in the shipbuilding industry on Merseyside? Is there a prospect that labour and management will co-operate enthusiastically to fulfil this contract as soon as possible in the national interest?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: The House will know that when we went to these three firms we asked particularly that they should have talks with their trade unions about shift working and demarcation issues because of the importance of the time factor in this project. We have had some assurance and I am sure that we shall get a measure of co-operation. This order is worth about £20 million to those working in the Merseyside shipbuilding area and at its peak the programme will employ about 3,500 extra people on the Polaris project.

Mr. Paget: Will the hon. Gentleman take very great care, as he has been saying, to see that the contracts and work on Polaris submarines are used to mop up unemployment, since the net result is not in the least likely to be any manner of use for any other purpose?

Mr. Orr-Ewing: For the five years I have served in the Government, I have always been able to rely on the hon. and learned Gentleman for the most original views.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: I think that we must move on to the next business.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Pentland: On a point of order I should like to have your advice, Mr. Speaker, on a matter of concern to hon. Members representing constituencies in the north-east of England.
On Monday of this week, the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt), on a point of order, drew your attention to Questions which were on the Order Paper of that day in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Easing-ton (Mr. Shinwell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton-on-Tees (Mr. W. T. Rodgers). The hon. Member for Hereford asked you:
Is it in order that Questions about the North-East should always be put to the Parliamentary Secretary for Science?

You replied:
I will look at the matter again."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th May, 1963; Vol. 677, c. 22.]
Yesterday, some of my hon. Friends who had put Questions to the Parliamentary Secretary for Science, as representing the Lord President of the Council, about unemployment in their own areas, were informed by the Table that those Questions had been transferred to other Ministers. This places many of us who represent the North-East in a dilemma, because we had always thought that, the North-East having a Minister for North-East affairs and having a special Question Time of our own, the range of our Questions bearing on North-East affairs would be very widespread.
Indeed, we had taken cognisance of the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Hailsham, when explaining in the House of Lords his appointment by the Prime Minister, said this:
I liked to regard myself as being appointed the advocate of that region in Government circles. He"—
that is, the Prime Minister—
also asked me to produce what he called a definite plan. At any rate, I hope to indicate a strategy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 19th February, 1963; Vol. 246, c. 1275.]
It was with the purpose of finding out what that definite plan is which he is advocating to Ministers in the Cabinet, and what is the strategy that he is indicating as a solution of the problems of unemployment, that we framed our Questions. Therefore, I should be very grateful, Mr. Speaker, if you would explain to the House how we stand on this matter and how far our Questions can range to be acceptable to the Table.

Mr. Speaker: There is a real difficulty here, but it is not really one for me. The Questions which were put down about which the hon. Member raised a point the other day were quite rightly put down on the Order Paper as they were then, but it is within the power of Ministers to transfer Questions where they like. That is not a matter for which the Chair can take responsibility. I think that the hon. Member's quarrel really is with the Ministers concerned. I observe that the Leader of the House is present. No doubt he will have heard what has been said. I cannot, within the field of my duty, accept responsibility for the transfers of Questions.

Mr. Short: Is this not a matter which involves the responsibility of Ministers to Parliament, and does it not rather make nonsense: of their responsibility if the only way in which we can question the Minister responsible for North-East affairs is to find a minute chink between the responsibilities of one Minister and another? Is there not a case, if there is to be a Minister for the North-East, for allowing us to put Questions over the whole range of North-East affairs?

Mr. Speaker: That is what we do at present, so far as the Chair is concerned, but what the hon. Member has said will no doubt have been noted.

Mr. Jay: Part of the difficulty here is, is it not, that we are not altogether clear whether the noble Lord's jurisdiction over North-East affairs has come to an end, or whether it has not? We have the Leader of the House with us at the moment. If he knows whether the noble Lord still has authority in the North-East perhaps he would say so. If he does not know, perhaps the Government could make up their mind.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod): The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Iain Macleod) rose—

Mr. P. Williams: It is not one of the difficulties that the noble Lord is doing a jolly good job?

Mr. Speaker: It is better to permit one question to be answered before imposing another one.

Mr. Iain Macleod: If I may help the House on this point of order, there is, of course, no change in the functions. I appreciate the difficulty, but the House will see the difficulty in fragmenting the Order Paper on a regional basis, because there would be claims from the North-West and many other parts. This is an

obvious difficulty, but we discuss these matters regularly through the usual channels, and if any changes are appropriate they are made at one of what we may call our natural breaks,, of which the next one will be Whitsun. If the hon. Member will allow me, I will take up through the usual channels the point that he has made to see whether there is any way—I see great difficulties to any possible solution—in which we can help.

BALLOT FOR NOTICES OF MOTIONS

Exports

Mr. Hastings: I beg to give notice that on Friday, 24th May, I shall call attention to the export problem, and move a Resolution.

Danger of War

Mr. Frank Allaun: I beg to give notice that on Friday, 24th May, I shall call attention to the danger of war, and move a Resolution.

National Health Service (Doctors and Nurses)

Mr. Boyden: I beg to give notice that on Friday, 24th May, I shall call attention to the serious shortage of doctors and nurses in the National Health Service, and move a Resolution.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE (SUPPLY)

Ordered,

That this day Business other than the Business of Supply may be taken before Ten o'clock.—[Mr. Iain Macleod.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[16TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Considered in Committee.

[Sir WILLIAM ANSTROTHER-GRAY in the Chair]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That a further sum, not exceeding £50, be granted to Her Majesty, towards defraying the charges for the year ending on the 31st day of March 1964, for the following services connected with the National Health Service, for England and Wales and Scotland. namely:—

Civil Estimates, 1963–64


£


Class VI, Vote 13, Ministry of Health
10


Class VI, Vote 14, National Health Service etc. (Hospital Services, etc.),England and Wales
10


Class VI, Vote 15, National Health Service (Executive Councils' Services),England and Wales
10


Class VI, Vote 16, Miscellaneous Health and Welfare Services, England and Wales
10


Class VI, Vote 18, National Health Service, etc., Scotland
10


Total
£50

Orders of the Day — NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

3.46 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Robinson: The British nation is fitter and longer-lived today than ever before. Britain's health record and her medical services are the envy of many nations and may well become their model. Our Health Service has been described by an American social historian, Professor Almont Lindsey, as 'magnificent in scope and almost breath-taking in its implications'.
Those sentences which remain broadly true even today, are not mine. They are taken from the first and the last pages of a pamphlet "Design for the Nation's Health", just published by the Conservative Central Office. It is a little odd how Conservative love for the National Health Service grows with the approach of a General Election, and just in case anyone may be mislead by any attempted takeover bid for the Service perhaps I had better start by reminding the Committee and the country, once again, that this great Service would never have been born if the

party opposite, which voted against the Second and Third Readings of the National Health Service Bill, had had its way.
I should like to add a quotation of my own from the same American professor and the same admirable book which was quoted by the Conservative Central Office pamphlet, which is, incidentally, called, "Socialised Medicine". On page 100, Professor Lindsey writes:
Until the Conservatives came into power in the fall of 1951, the cost of the Health Service was an issue that that party did not fail to exploit in its attack upon the Labour Government.
The main structure of the Service was so soundly designed and built by Aneurin Bevan that it has stood up remarkably well to the strains and stresses of twelve years of government by the party opposite, but the Service has certainly not expanded and developed in the way that we all looked forward to at the start of what was then a great experiment. Indeed, far from advancing, in some respects we have been going steadily backwards and in the place of expansion we have had contraction. I want to come back to this in a moment.
I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee must have been entertained by an article which appeared last Sunday in the Sunday Times, entitled "Enoch's Week-end". It purported to be a kind of fly-on-the-wall report of that now famous Chequers meeting of 10 days ago, and if one is to believe this article, in the course of a generally dazzling display of intellectual virtuosity by Her Majesty's Ministers, one star shone out far brighter than the rest, and that was the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health.
I was reminded of the famous description of the boat race by the Victorian novelist Ouida, who wrote that
All rowed fast, but none rowed so fast as stroke".
I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman handled his stroke oar with great dexterity on that occasion. I am equally sure that some of his colleagues found great difficulty in keeping up with him in his break-neck excursion into the Britain 'seventies, but I beg the right hon. Gentleman to take his eyes off the far


political horizon for a few moments and to take a closer look at what is happening today in the early 'sixties, to the hospital services, for which he has a rather more direct responsibility. The right hon. Gentleman has subjected the hospitals to a painful and quite deliberate financial squeeze which has had the effect of weakening the service and forcing it in many respects to contract.
This may all sound very paradoxical, at any rate to those hon. Gentlemen who have been dazzled by the ten-year Hospital Plan and the large sums of capital moneys which are scheduled to be spent an hospital building over the next fifteen years. Though we have criticised that plan in detail, I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that we welcomed it in principle, even if we noticed that there was no firm commitment to anything anywhere. Nevertheless, we all recognised that at long last money was more freely available for capital development of the hospitals, and that this came after a long period of capital starvation when the hospital service could do little more than make do and mend.
During the last six to nine months we have become aware of the price, of at any rate part of the price, that we have to pay for these major developments in hospital building, because capital starvation has now been replaced by a maintenance squeeze. This all goes back to the right hon. Gentleman's Lloyd Roberts lecture in the autumn of 1961, when he expressed the view that a figure of 2½ per cent. in real terms was about the right figure for the annual growth of the National Health Service.
In Question and Answer in the House later, he made it clear that this was not so much his own figure as that of the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd), who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer and who quoted this figure in his economic crisis statement of July, 1961. But the Minister of Health added his own refinement to this 21 per cent. and said that he thought 2 per cent. was enough for the hospital service.
I freely admit that at the time the right hon. Gentleman's remarks created no very great stir. They were not so much a bombshell as a time bomb, and this weapon went on ticking away merrily. Few people in the hospital service paid

very much attention to it until it exploded in their faces about a year ago, because when the regional hospital boards came to examine their 1962–63 allocations, most of them found to their dismay that they had not got even 2 per cent. I think that out of 15 regional hospital boards 10 received markedly less than 2 per cent. The range was from just over ½ per cent. to just over 2½ per cent.
What does this figure mean to a hospital authority trying to run a group of hospitals or a region? It may not sound disastrous, but that is precisely what it is, because even a figure of 2 per cent., let alone one of 1½ or 1 per cent., for expansion, means one thing only, and that is a contraction of hospital services. I should like to explain this to the House, because it is not altogether a simple matter.
One must first ask oneself what this increase, which amounts to 3d., 4d. or 5d. in the £, has to do. First, it has to cover any increase in staff, though not of course, any increase in wages or salaries. I recognise that this is met by Supplementary Estimates as a separate operation, but any numerical increase in staff must be covered by this increase. It must cover any price increases in the course of the year, and last year there were many such price increases, particularly in food. I think that the Committee will recall that the price of potatoes, which are consumed in large quantities in our hospitals, rose to an all-time high. The increase also has to finance the maintenance costs of any new development in the hospital service, but above all this there is another and still more important factor.
The techniques of medicine are inevitably becoming more complex and more expensive all the time. This is an irresistible process, and is not unique to the hospital service. It is common to every scientific or technological field. In the hospitals, this increase in complexity and costs results, and I think is wholly justified, in more intensive and effective medical care of the patients. This is not easy to measure in monetary terms, but the amount of this increase, going on remorselessly year after year, is a good deal more than 2 per cent. One medical journal suggests a figure of 5 per cent. per annum for this aspect alone. All this can only mean that a hospital which is squeezed down to a 2 per cent. figure of


increase must contract, and that to some extent the service it can give to its patients must deteriorate.
But this is not the whole story, because 1962 showed a sudden and marked improvement in the nurse recruitment situation. One cannot be sure what this was due to. It may have been due, to some extent, to rising unemployment, to fewer opportunities in fields in competition with the Health Service—light industry and that kind of thing—and possibly to some extent to the much publicised and ultimately successful fight of the nurses for more pay and a better standard of living. Anyway the situation improved.
Up to that time nearly every non-teaching hospital in the country had been suffering from a shortage of trained nurses and of suitable student nurses. The shortage was acute, and, indeed, endemic, but where hospitals had been able to recruit additional nurses the money had in the past been found somehow. Regional boards usually had some small reserve tucked away which they would make available to any hospital authority which managed to increase its establishment of nurses. Suddenly, about a year ago, the recruiting situation changed. More girls, and young men, too, became available. Some hospitals recruited more nurses, and immediately found themselves, often less than half way through the financial year, with a financial crisis because, owing to the squeeze, there were no reserves to meet this additional expenditure. Worse than that, other hospitals—the right hon. Gentleman might think that they were the more prudent ones—had no option but to turn away potential nurses. In fact, they were turned away in their hundreds and thousands and were lost to the nursing profession for ever. It is no less than a tragedy, and it is one for which we shall probably be paying many years hence.
What did the hospitals do, faced with this situation? Any hospital authority is reluctant in the extreme to cut down in any way the service which it gives the patient, but many of them had to close down wards for lack of nurses. In many more—indeed, in most—recruitment of nurses stopped absolutely. More than one regional hospital board actually instructed its hospital management com-

mittees not to recruit any more nurses. Some hospitals were even unable to replace the nursing staff which had left for one reason or another. In one hospital that I know of the preliminary nurses training school had to cut down its intake of student nurses by 50 per cent. All this had an appalling effect on the morale in the hospital service.
Here again, this is not the end of the story. What else did the hospitals have to do to tighten their belts? Some made economies in food. We heard stories of butter being replaced by margarine. Some stopped overtime, and some dismissed staff. But most were forced to do the one thing that does not immediately affect the patient, namely, to defer building maintenance work and to postpone repairs, redecorations, and renewals of equipment of all kinds, including medical equipment.
The net effect of the right hon. Gentleman's economy drive on the hospitals was to force them into an utterly false economy, because maintenance and repairs must be done in the end. The equipment must be renewed, and it is bound to cost more when it is done. I have been talking about 1961–62, but exactly the same situation was repeated this year. No more money was allowed for maintenance; the same proportionate increase was granted by the Ministry, and the same work must be deferred for another twelve months, and will still be more costly to carry out when it can be deferred no longer.
Hospital management committees appreciate the sheer stupidity of this policy, even if the right hon. Gentleman does not. I do not know whether he is aware of the fact, but he is breaking the hearts of the members and officers of hospital authorities who are dedicated to improving the Service in any way they can. The situation was summed up in an editorial in the Lancet on 6th April this year, which said:
hospitals can introduce improvements … only at the price of deliberate economies in existing services; and hospital authorities insist that, having saved as much as they can—for instance, on the hotel side, or by postponing redecoration, or even by abstaining from buying necessary medical equipment—they can save no more. In the drive to improve the service they have been brought to a halt: without extra aid the next move will be downhill.


There is no sign that extra aid is coming from this Government, and in my view the move downhill has already begun.
I want to know why the right hon. Gentleman imposed these cuts—because they are cuts. Certainly, one can see nothing in the current economic situation to justify this. When, last July, the right hon. Gentleman was elevated to the Cabinet, nearly everybody in the National Health Service was delighted. Everybody felt, somehow, that this raised the status of the service, and that the Minister would he able to fight all the harder for the service and get more money for it. All I can say is that, in the event, they have been bitterly disappointed at the result.
Before I turn to my other main topic, I want to say a few words about the doctors' pay award. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in letting me have some statistics—making a special effort to do so—which might be useful in this afternoon's debate. There are some extraordinary features about this pay award. It stems from the original appointment of the Royal Commission on Medical and Dental Remuneration—which recommended the award of a 22 per cent. increase in medical salaries in February, 1960, although the House will recall that part of that 22 per cent. had already been paid in the form of interim awards before 1960.
The Royal Commission recommended the setting up of a review body, which was to be independent of the Minister of Health, of the Government and of the professions—a body which would be charged with the duty periodically of reviewing the level of medical and dental incomes, and a body to which the professions could from time to time make their submissions. There was some delay, but the review body was in due course set up—not by the Minister of Health but by the Prime Minister, presumably because the Royal Commission had been set up by the Prime Minister, and the review body derived from that Royal Commission. A prominent banker was chosen as chairman of the review body.
But, with that unerring instinct that characterises all the Prime Minister's appointments, and presumably to emphasise the impartiality of the review body, the Prima Minister selected as chairman

the one bunker in Britain who just happened to be an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. At least, I hope that I am right in assuming that Lord Kindersley was not made an honorary F.R.C.S. subsequently, as a reward for his services to the medical profession. The form in which these recommendations are made is an extremely odd one. It comprises a long, chatty letter from the chairman to the Prime Minister, which begins, "Dear Prime Minister", and ends, "Yours sincerely, Kindersley". It is the Prime Minister who accepts or rejects the review body's recommendations.
When the body reported, I asked the Prime Minister, at Question Time, whether he knew of any other wage-negotiating body which reported its recommendations directly to him. The Prime Minister did not know of any—and, indeed, he did not seem to know why this one did. Does not the Minister of Health find this position slightly humiliating? Is it not time that this body was told that in future it should report to him? He is clearly responsible for the level of medical remuneration. I hope that ha will put this matter right.
In the event, the doctors were awarded another 14 per cent. This means that they have had very nearly a 40 per cent. increase in about six years, which is more than most groups of workers in the community have had—certainly more than most groups within the National Health Service. The latest award, affecting over 50,000 doctors, will cost the taxpayers about £16 million more per year. The review body explained, however, that it was really an award for the next three years. If that is so, it is equivalent to very nearly 7 per cent. cumulative for each of the next three years. When I put this point to the Prime Minister he said that he did not accept my arithmetic. If the Minister of Health challenges my arithmetic, I hope that he will correct me when he replies. I think that he will find that it is just about 7 per cent. per annum for She next three years.
Without in any way wishing to criticise the award, I have two things to say about it. First, the review body's terms of reference are, broadly, to keep medical remuneration in line with other professional incomes and, presumably, with the cost of living. In practice, how can the review body foretell what will


be the level of other professional incomes in 1966, or what will be the cost of living then? Does it add clairvoyance to the other distinguished qualities which it brings to its work? Secondly, the figure of 7 per cent. goes a good way beyond any guiding light that has so far illumined the Government's incomes policy, if we may dignify it with that name. The 14 per cent. is still further removed.
I should like to ask one question of the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope that he will answer it. Why was this salary award not referred to N.I.C.? Is not that precisely the kind of thing that the National Incomes Commission was set up to consider? Is there any class distinction here? Are professional earnings exempt from N.I.C.'s baleful glare?

The Minister of Health (Mr. Enoch Powell): Before the hon. Gentleman mentions 7 per cent. again, could he do the arithmetic a little more fully?

Mr. Robinson: It is perfectly simple. If the right hon. Gentleman starts at the figure of 100 and adds 7 per cent. on for each of three years. he will find that the result comes to just on 14 per cent. In other words, with 7 per cent. per year for three years, the doctors would have had, after three years, the same income as they will have with 14 per cent. increase straight away.

Mr. Powell: Will the hon. Gentleman do it again?

Mr. Robinson: I am not going on doing it. If the right hon. Gentleman has not time to do the arithmetic, he can get his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to do it between now and the winding up of the debate.
I want to ask the Minister one more thing about the doctors' award. Will he take this opportunity, the occasion of this very substantial increase, to discuss with the profession the present quite ludicrous method of reimbursing practice expenses? This is, as he must know, a system which, far from encouraging better standards in general practice, actually penalises those doctors who adopt better standards, and I would hope that he could have some talks with the profession about this.
Before I leave this topic, I want to say one word about this whole method of salary negotiations. Whatever the merits or demerits of the system, it has obviously done pretty well by the doctors. But why are the doctors and the dentists the only categories of National Health Service staff entitled to opt out of the Whitley system? I do not know of any group of Health Service workers who are at all satisfied with the Whitley negotiating machinery as it is at present functioning.
Why cannot, at least, the other professional workers have their own review body, or the same one for that matter? If it is right for doctors, why is it wrong for physiotherapists or radiographers, or P.S.W.s? Why not a review body for nurses, who, after all, have just received an arbitration award which leaves some student nurses worse off than they were before? Why not a review body for clinical psychologists, who have been awarded this morning by the Industrial Court not 14 per cent., but 4 per cent. increase?
I come to my last main topic, which is the control and safety of drugs. This is, of course, a subject which was thrust to the fore both in this House and in the public Press a year ago as a result of the thalidomide tragedy. The House and the public suddenly woke up to the fact that any drug manufacturer could market any product however inadequately tested, however dangerous, without having to satisfy any independent body as to its efficacy or its safety, and the public was almost uniquely unprotected in this respect.
Inevitably, comparisons were drawn with the United States of America, not, I think, a country noted for excessive State interference with private enterprise, but, nevertheless, a country where every new drug has to pass through a fine sieve of the Food and Drugs Administration, which is a Government agency, and one which incidentally, as the House will recall, managed to prevent the distribution of thalidomide in the United States. As soon as the facts became known about thalidomide, the United States Congress established even tighter control, so that no drug can now be marketed in the United States without the specific approval of the right hon. Gentleman's opposite number, the Secretary for Health, Education and Welfare.


When we discussed this, the right hon. Gentleman seemed to adopt a rather negative attitude. It was only under some pressure from these benches and from the medical and pharmaceutical professions that he agreed last July to refer the problem to his standing medical advisory committee. We told him then that in our view the control of new drugs should be carried out by a statutory body responsible to him. This sub-committee, under Lord Cohen, has now reported. It has analysed the problem quite admirably, in my view, and also stated the difficulties that there are, but it has produced a solution which I can only describe as utterly unsatisfactory and disappointing.
It has produced a Report which, in places, is quite contradictory, or so it seems to me. Lord Cohen and the majority of his committee recommended in somewhat muted tones the setting up of an expert body to which drug manufacturers may, but will not be required by law, to submit new drugs for assessment of toxicity tests and approval of clinical trials. it is a little difficult to discover from the Report whether the Cohen Committee really believes that control of this kind is necessary or whether it is making its recommendation as a kind of sop to public and professional anxiety. The main point about this solution is that a voluntary scheme such as the committee suggests involves no legislation and can have no real sanctions of any kind.
Although the Cohen Committee apparently sees virtue in voluntary control, it says, in paragraph 7 of the Report:
These arrangements themselves would obviously be more effective with legislative sanction than without and we are satisfied that legislation on the whole subject is urgently required.
I think that few of us would contradict that. The basic poisons legislation on which we are working derives, I think, from the mid-Victorian era and is quite unsuitable to deal with the problem of modern drugs and medicine. We have had a number of patching up operations, such as the Penicillin Act, the Therapeutic Substances Act, but they are a very limited application, very much legislation ad hoc. The responsibility in this whole field is divided between the right hon. Gentleman and the Home Secretary on fairly arbitrary lines.
This same paragraph goes on a little later to say:
We recognise, however, that legislation would probably involve a comprehensive review of the whole field and that this is a major undertaking.
I think that this is misleading, if not disingenuous. Surely the Cohen Committee knew that just such a comprehensive review of this legislation had already taken place; that it had been undertaken by an inter-departmental working party which had reported to the right hon. Gentleman last July.
Was the Cohen Committee not told this? If it was not, why not? Surely this was relevant to its inquiry. I only discovered this fact from a Written Answer, which I got from the right hon. Gentleman last week, when I asked when the Report was to be published. I was told that this was a study by officials which was not for publication. Why not? What is there to hide? Why have we not yet had any action on this?
If the right hon. Gentleman took his responsibilities seriously and really regarded this as an urgent problem, we could have had a Bill in draft by now and it could have been ready for the next Queen's Speech, that is if we are to have another Queen's Speech from this Government, which I profoundly hope we are not. We do not consider that the Cohen Committee recommendations meet the situation at all, but fortunately it is not a unanimous Report. A very much more satisfactory solution is contained in the minority Report, which very faithfully reflects our thinking on this side of the Committee.
The minority Report was signed by the only two pharmacists on the Cohen Committee, one of whom is the Minister's hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead). Those who have signed the minority Report saw no virtue, as we see no virtue, in a voluntarily controlled body, even as a temporary expedient. They list criticisms of the majority recommendations in a quite devastating way. There are three major deficiencies. First, there is no certainty that the whole pharmaceutical industry will co-operate in a voluntary scheme; secondly, the sanctions will be few and weak; and, thirdly, a voluntary scheme may give the appearance of safety without the reality.
This note of dissent goes on to say that there is no country comparable with Britain which has not found it necessary to control drugs by Statute. It lists eight features, which I will not rehearse now because they are well set out in the Report, essential to effective control and inevitably absent from any voluntary scheme. Finally, they, too, press for a comprehensive single Statute bringing the whole field of drugs and medicine under the control of the Minister of Health, which is where it should lie, and that this be done as a matter of urgency.
We on this side of the Committee support this minority Report very strongly. Whatever steps the right hon. Gentleman may have taken already to set up a voluntary committee, I cannot believe that a Labour Government and a Labour Minister of Health would be satisfied with anything less than statutory safeguards as set out in the minority Report. Indeed, I am a little surprised at the rapidity with which the right hon. Gentleman accepted the whole idea of a voluntary scheme and acted upon it, because he has already appointed the chairman and chairmen of three subcommittees. It leads one to think that the right hon. Gentleman received the recommendation for which he had hoped.
Admittedly, a statutory duty places an additional burden on the Minister of Health, but I submit that this is a burden which a Minister charged with the duty of protecting the health of the people should be prepared to shoulder. We believe that a Minister who prefers to shelter behind an optional scheme and a semi-independent body with no teeth is in dereliction of that duty.
If the right hon. Gentleman had waited a little longer—and we have waited nine months already—to hear the views of the House of Commons, the pharmaceutical profession, and, I believe, the medical profession, he would have found very powerful support for the minority views in the Report. The Pharmaceutical Society felt so strongly about it that it held a Press conference to protest. More than one leading manufacturer has supported the idea of statutory control, and I should be surprised indeed if the medical profession would

not prefer statutory to voluntary control.
Most important of all, I do not believe that the public will be reassured by any halfway house such as the right hon. Gentleman proposes. The right hon. Gentleman may say that this is only a temporary expedient. We know only too well how temporary expedients are apt to become permanent solutions. I hope profoundly that the right hon. Gentleman will think again about this before proceeding any further.
These general debates that we have on the National Health Service are so regrettably infrequent that one must exclude far more than one has time to discuss. It is possible to concentrate only on two or three topics. I have not said anything about the ten-year plan for the health and welfare services of local authorities. I have left this out deliberately because I believe, and I think that the right hon. Gentleman agrees with me, that this is a matter which should be discussed in a whole day's debate for which the Government should provide time. I have many serious reservations about the plan, and I would certainly welcome a debate on it.
I have not referred to the dental services, which are seriously inadequate, because I understand that we may have a debate on the admirable report of the Estimates Committee on Dental Services before the end of this Session. I have not been able to refer to the general medical services, to the need to associate general practitioners more closely with the hospital services and to the serious shortage of doctors in all branches and at all levels, and I have not mentioned the mental health services. I have said nothing about the system for the control of drug prices, which is improving but is far from satisfactory yet. Perhaps other hon. Members will fill these gaps.
There is much that is wrong with the National Health Service today. The Lancet recently ended an editorial by asking:
is the hospital service to be allowed to slide into the second-rate, and if so, why?
Fortunately for the many thousands who work in and for the Health Service, one thing will prevent that and that is the Labour victory at the General Election which is not very far away.

4.26 p.m.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Enoch Powell): The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) admitted quite candidly in his concluding sentences that in opening this debate upon the National Health Service he had not been able to make more than a passing reference to one of the greatest developments in this whole field—the hospital plan—and none at all to another, the development of the services of community care outside the hospitals.
I recognise the limitations which time placed upon him, as it places upon all of us, though I cannot feel that the hon. Member's selection was entirely unmotivated. I am sure that he will not be surprised if I seek in some respects to fill out the picture.
Nevertheless, I should like to devote the greater part of my speech to the topics which the hon. Member chose, and I should like to start with the Committee on the Safety of Drugs which the Government have just announced their intention to appoint and towards which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and I have taken the initial steps.
I must begin here by expressing our gratitude to Lord Cohen and the whole of his Committee for the work which they did upon this and for the advice which they tendered; to Sir Derrick Dunlop and his three colleagues, who will be the chairmen of the respective subcommittees, for undertaking what is an extremely responsible and difficult task under any arrangement or circumstances; and to the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry for having so readily indicated that they will co-operate in making these arrangements effective—for effective they can be.
I wish to remove any notion that this is a safety control lacking in teeth and incapable of giving effective service. I should like to show this by looking at the three separate functions which the Committee on the Safety of Drugs will have to discharge. Taking, first, the third of these, the arrangement for collecting and evaluating data on the assessment of drugs in use, there can be no question of a statutory basis or statutory sanction being relevant here. This will depend upon the co-operation of a very large number of people, which, in any

case, will be voluntarily given and cannot be enforced. and upon the arrangements which the Committee will organise. Therefore, I think that we can place that function on one side.
The first of the functions, in order, is to advise on the adequacy of toxicity tests before drugs are submitted to clinical trial. Here, the effective control lies in the hands of the consultant who is to carry out the clinical trial, and I cannot conceive that a consultant would either go against the advice of a Committee as influential and as authoritative as this, or that he would lightly proceed to the trial of a drug which this Committee had not cleared.
I must say at this point that I can see very great difficulties in applying statutory prohibition to the prescription of a drug by an individual doctor in his professional responsibility to an individual patient. I say that generally as well as specifically in relation to clinical trials. But I cannot conceive that in practice the advice of this Committee would be overridden by consultants or that clinical trials would be carried out upon drugs to which they had not given clearance.
There remains the function of advising on the adequacy of clinical trials before a drug is brought into general use. Nearly all new drugs, in the sense in which we are using the term, are presented as ethicals. That is to say, they are only available when they are prescribed for a patient by his doctor. Here again, it is virtually inconceivable that a doctor would deliberately prescribe to a patient, without the strangest reasons for which he would take personal responsibility, a new drug which had either not been cleared by this Committee or upon which this Committee had rendered an adverse report. It is really almost impossible to conceive that that would happen in practice.
Therefore, we are left only with the extremely improbable and unusual case where a new drug, a new medicinal substance, would be first brought into use as a non-ethical in sale across the counter. It is very difficult to think that this could, in fact, occur at all. But did this occur, then arrangements will be made for all drugs which are marketed—and this will include such a drug as I


have posed—to come immediately to the notice of the Committee. After all, a drug cannot be marketed unless it is brought very widely to the attention both of the profession and of the public. If there were any question of the Committee not being satisfied, then in the brief interim between their receiving knowledge of this drug and reporting upon it, I have no doubt that the cooperation of the pharmaceutical profession would be available to ensure that the drug so in suspense was not offered for sale to the public.
In practical reality, therefore, these arrangements are armed with very effective teeth. It will neither pay a manufacturer if he so desired, nor will it be practicable for a manufacturer, to market a new drug either without clearance by this Committee or contrary to the recommendations of the Committee. I must say that whatever may be the legislative form that eventually it may be desirable to give to this control, as, indeed, it is certainly desirable that there should be a legislative reform of our law relating to drugs generally, I am sure that those provisions will be sounder, more practicable and better based as a result of the working the arrangements which are now being set up upon a voluntary basis. Therefore, from these arrangements, effective in themselves, armed in themselves with effective sanctions, we shall draw valuable experience which will help the House at a later stage to decide upon legislation.
I do not want to pass from this subject, however, without saying very emphatically that when we use the word "safety" in this context we should not be understood to mean absolute safety. Safety in this field is relative, whatever be the arrangements, whatever be the law. It is relative, as the Committee made clear, to the illness. It is relative in the sense that there is no system that can be devised which will make doctors or scientists aware of what medicine and science have not yet suspected.
In the case of thalidomide it is possible to say in retrospect that even if the proposed arrangements had been in force some years ago, be it on a statutory or on a non-statutory basis, it is unlikely that they would have averted the

thalidomide disaster, and that proposition is supported by the fact that thalidomide was marketed in many countries which have statutory control of drugs, and that in no country which had such a control were the grounds on which this drug was withdrawn brought to notice by that machinery.

Lord Balniel: In these proposals would there be any legal redress for a person harmed by a medicine against this voluntary body, or are we clear that the legal redress is solely against the pharmaceutical company or the doctor concerned? Am I right in believing that responsibility for marketing these products rests solely in the hands of the pharmaceutical company?

Mr. Powell: I would hesitate to give a legal ruling on where liability in certain circumstances might lie, but the advice tendered by this Committee will be made available to those whom it concerns to act upon it, by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and by myself. But given that fact, I cannot see that these arrangements can alter the present legal situation as regards liability.

Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: Reverting to the right hon. Gentleman's comment about control, can he name one country which has a comparable system to the one which he is proposing here where this is true of thalidomide?

Mr. Powell: Yes, I am advised that in Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, countries with comprehensive drug control legislation, thalidomide was placed on the market.

Dr. Mabon: Comparable to the system which the Minister is proposing?

Mr. Powell: Comprehensive control of the marketing of drugs.
The second major topic in the hon. Gentleman's speech was an elaborate attempt to show that there had been in recent years—and these were his words—a contraction in the hospital service. It is to the refutation of this paradox that I now turn. I should like to begin by describing briefly the system under which the allocations for current expenditure are made to hospital authorities. The object which underlies these arrangements is that there should be each year a


definite additional amount of real spending power available to the hospital service, and that the approximate amount should be foreseen well in advance so that draft budgets can be prepared by hospital authorities two or three years ahead.
This system of forward looks, as we have got into the way of calling it, which I would hope before long to be able to extend to four and five years ahead, has given hospital authorities the opportunity of planning their expenditure, of a rational control of their expenditure in a way that they could not do on a purely annual basis of allocations. They are able to draw up their budgets and make their plans with much greater assurance of the resources which they will command.
To ensure that the hospital service has annually this additional spending power at its disposal, the allocations take full account of all the rises in costs which have taken place during the preceding twelve months. The whole of those rises in costs is made good in the Estimates for the following year, before the growth percentage is superimposed on top of that; and during the financial year Supplementary Estimates are made to cover all increases in cost, except certain price increases which in total represent only a tiny fraction of the whole expenditure and which, as a matter of fact, during the last financial year, were less than they had been during the previous one.
It is important to notice that while, for this small element of additional expenditure, additional allocations are not made, the hospital authorities have at their disposal the underspending on other items of their budgets which inevitably occurs in any circumstances and which, in the past, has often given rise to something frequently discussed in Committees of this House: the unplanned spending of the last few months or weeks of the year. In addition to that there is—and this must never be forgotten when percentage figures such as 2 and 2½ are talked about—the fact that there accrues to the additional real expansion of the service everything which the hospital authorities achieve by way of economies and increases in efficiency by organisation or otherwise. This, though it cannot be quantified, is almost certainly more important in total than what I might call the visible additional spending power which is allocated.
By all these means the hospital service is assured of the means that year by year it will be able to expand the real services it provides to the patient. I propose to illustrate how this has happened by the experience of the last twelve months. I will not go back and institute comparisons between the staffing of the service now and that of five or ten years ago. I will limit myself to the changes which have taken place in a short, recent period.
The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North made some assumptions and predictions about the future course of staffing in the hospital service. I must warn him that it is very unwise now to do this, because he has been so badly wrong in the past. Consider doctors. In a debate just over a year ago the hon. Member said that there was a
…serious shortage of doctors throughout the hospital service … This shortage is growing and … will soon become critical."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th March, 1962; Vol. 656, c. 1081.]
As a matter of fact, in 1962 as compared with 1961—the year in which the shortage was "growing" and was soon to "become critical"—senior medical staffs in hospitals increased by 2½ per cent. and junior staffs by 6 per cent.
And in case anyone should say that this is attributable to the large numbers of doctors from overseas who come to add to their experience in our hospitals, who provide a useful and substantial reinforcement of the staffing of our hospitals and who are an advertisement to the world of British medicine and British hospitals, they constituted only a minority of this substantial increase. The increase in British-born doctors during the period was 455 and of non-British born only 289.
So medical staffing has seen a continuation of what has been happening throughout the history of the service. We have seen it continue in the last year, this increase in the size of professional staff. I will not trouble the House with a similar demonstration regarding all the other categories of staff, but I would like to indicate the order of increase that has been experienced in the last twelve months for which we have figures available in certain broad classes of staff. They are nursing: 4·7 per cent.; professional


and technical, 3.8 per cent.; administrative and clerical 3·5 per cent.; and domestic and ancillary, 2·4 per cent.—all in whole-time equivalents. This is not the picture of a hospital service which is shrinking, or running down or in which the standard of staffing is falling.
The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North was very badly wrong about his predictions on nursing staffing a year ago. In a debate almost exactly a year ago the hon. Member said:
… we are just not renewing even our present inadequate complement of trained nurses … this trend must have very seriously worsened during recent months".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th May, 1962; Vol. 659, c. 938.]
I warn the hon. Member about those words "must have"—because it did not. The reverse happened. In fact, at the very time the hon. Member was saying that, the staffing of nurses of every kind and class was rising to record figures. The total number of whole-time and part-time showed large increases and there was no category of nursing staff which, at the end of that statistical year, was not at the highest figure that had ever been achieved.

Mr. K. Robinso: n: To complete the picture, would the right hon. Gentleman remind the House that he stopped nurse recruitment because he thought that it had gone up too fast?

Mr. Powell: This demonstrates that with the allocations which the authorities had—the allocations of 2 per cent. in real terms, which continues the rate of real increase in spending power over recent years—the hospitals were able to recruit and continue to recruit every type of staff.

Mr. Denis Howell: If the Minister served on a hospital management committee he would not talk that nonsense.

Mr. Powell: These figures derive from hospital management committees and reflect their experience.
When speaking about student nurses in that debate a year ago the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North said:
It is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit student nurses."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th March, 1962; Vol. 656. c. 1087.]
In fact, the latest figures we have show that student and pupil nurses are at the

highest figures which they have ever reached. This is not, therefore, a situation in which the service is starved of money and is running down its staff.
I would like at this point to make one exception to my general rule and look at a longer period of time, because I do not think that it is generally realised—and this is worth being publicly recognised—what a transformation there has been during the last ten or fifteen years in the nursing profession and the staffing of our hospitals. I will give just three figures which, I think, illustrate this point dramatically. Between 1949 and 1961 midwifery and nursing staffs in the Health Service increased by more than 21 per cent., compared with an increase of between 8 and 9 per cent. in the working population and less than 5 per cent. in the total population. These figures illustrate dramatically how the nursing staffing of our hospitals over these years has been transformed and how the nursing profession has—and there is no hon. Member who will not rejoice over this—drawn into its ranks an increasing proportion of the available part of the working population.
But we can test the proposition of the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North in another way. We can look at the volume of treatment which the hospital service has been able to give during the last twelve months. We can see whether that indicates "a contraction"—his word—in the hospital service. The volume of treatment given during the past year rose—[HON. MEMBERS: "Statistics."] I appreciate that these are statistics, but they are useful, interesting and important statistics.
For acute cases treated in hospitals there was an increase last year—that is, 1962—over the year before of 2 per cent. It was 3 per cent. in surgical cases. This represents, in one year, 50,000 additional patients relieved or helped by the service. There was a 4 per cent. increase in maternity cases, representing 24,000 additional births in hospital, and 4 per cent. in the volume of mental treatment.
These are increases in volume of treatment roughly matching the increase in staff and indicating that we are using the available resources in the service to better and better purpose. This is certainly not the picture of a service which is starved of money and unable to make


advances. Whatever percentage figure one takes for the rate of real advance, there is no one who cannot wish that it could be pitched higher. I am sure that we all agree, whether it be 2 per cent., 2½ per cent. or 3 per cent., that there will always be good grounds for saying that more could effectively be used.
The important thing is that in this service, organised as it is and with the system of budgeting it has, we are getting the utmost return from the additional real resources which are being devoted to it. The rate at which these real resources are being devoted to the service as a whole is continuing to expand in line with our experience of previous years, and this has brought these figures to their present peak level.
However, we should not make the mistake of looking solely or mainly to increases in staff for the future improvement of the service. There must come a point—and this must increasingly be true—when it is from the modernisation of the pattern of our hospitals, their organisation, and so on, that we look for further advances in the service given to the patient. This is where the central significance of the hospital plan lies.
Hon. Members who examine the Estimates will see that the capital allocation this year—that is, the allocation for capital expenditure—has increased on a comparable basis from £36·8 million to £48 million in England and Wales. This is the next instalment of the expanding hospital programme which was placed before the country at the beginning of last year and of which the first revision was presented a month ago. That revision showed that in the first two years of the plan, 25 major schemes had been completed and that 65 others had been started, including 33 new or substantially new hospitals. In the new ten years—the ten years running to March, 1973—the assumed expenditure on the programme has risen in constant terms from £500 million to £600 million.
This programme is still expanding and marching forward, as the first revision showed. It will strain to the utmost the administrative and physical capacity of the hospital service. No method can be neglected to ensure that these large and increasing sums are fully spent and that the programme is carried forward at the rising rate which is envisaged.
Two years ago I told hospital authorities that in future I should not require to approve in detail schemes for which sketch plans had been agreed and which were within the cost limits for the various types of department laid down by my Ministry. I also told hospital authorities that, in the case of schemes not exceeding £60,000 in value, even that degree of approval would not be required for schemes within the cost limits.
I believe that I can go further now in this respect and I propose to tell hospital authorities that they have authority to carry through schemes without reference to me for approval, up to the value of £120,000 exclusive of fees and equipment; which, in practice, means that great schemes of the value of £150,000 to £160,000 each will be able to be carried through within the cost limit applied at the time, but without any paper work or cross-reference at all between the hospital authority and my Department.

Mr. K. Robinson: This is a welcome development. But what does the right hon. Gentleman mean by "within the cost limit applied at the time"?

Mr. Powell: From time to time my Department, through the building notes, indicates the cost limit for a particular type of hospital department. Now, provided that these schemes are within those limits, they can be carried through by the hospital authority without sketch plans being submitted or any other form of approval.
In the revision of the hospital plan proposed, the most important aspect to which hospital authorities had to address themselves was the consequence of the continued rise in the birth rate and, therefore, the rising demand for maternity provision. Regional hospital boards have different problems to face in this respect. The prospective increase varies very greatly between one region and another and hospital boards are still at work revising their plans in the light of the new birth rate figures. But it is already clear that many hundreds of additional maternity beds will be provided and the revised plan sets out various ways in which this will be done.
For example, for particular maternity units the starting dates will be brought


forward. The Birmingham maternity hospital will start in 1964. The St. Georges, Tooting, maternity hospital will be brought forward to start in 1964 instead of 1970. The Sidcup new hospital maternity provision will be brought forward to start in 1964 instead of 1966. The South Tees-side Hospital maternity unit will be brought forward to 1967 instead of after 1971. Numerous maternity units which are in the plan will be expanded and improvements will be made at other hospitals which will enable additional beds to be used for maternity purposes.
The trend—observable not only in this country, but in other European countries—towards shorter periods of stay in maternity hospitals and the fact that a number of small maternity hospitals, with which it might otherwise be possible to dispense, can be retained in use, should, together with these increases and accelerations, provide for the welcome increase in demand for maternity provision.
But it is unrealistic to look at the developments in the hospital service in isolation. It is quite unreal to detach the care and treatment of the patient in hospital from the care which can be provided for him in the community. I am proud to have been able to place by the side of the hospital plan the Blue Book which outlines the development of community care which local health and welfare authorities throughout the country envisage during the coming ten years.
These are based on a remarkable advance in the services during the last four or five years. Over the last five years alone local authority health and welfare staffs have expanded by 20 per cent.; and the rate of increase of expenditure by 4 per cent. to 5 per cent. per annum carried on from previous years over the next decade should make possible the very large developments sketched out in the Blue Book. Local authorities have welcomed the opportunity to see their own intentions in the context of what other local authorities are doing and in a common framework. For this is the first time that the whole of health and welfare services outside the hospitals have been reviewed comprehensively, and national purposes and standards suggested.
The Report which I have to put before the Committee is that of a National Health Service which is advancing steadily and confidently upon objectives fixed for long periods ahead and constantly restudied and restated. The hospital service has the inspiration of a broadening programme which within the next decade or two will entirely modernise the fabric and the pattern of our service. Local authorities and voluntary bodies have before them the challenge of community care in its fullest and its modern sense. No nation can put beside this undertaking anything which is comparable in scope, size or vision and it is this record against which hon. Members opposite wish to align themselves in the Lobby tonight.
All I can say is that if they do so, they will show themselves totally out of touch with the spirit which exists throughout the service and the attitude of the public towards it.

5.2 p.m.

Miss Jennie Lee: I hoped that at some point in his speech the Minister would give an indication that a hospital presents a different aspect according to one's relationship with it If one is a patient, one looks at a hospital in a different manner from that of a friend or a relative of a patient. If one is a member of the nursing staff, or a doctor, or one who helps the nurses and doctors, the prospect is different again.
For a Minister of Health, a hospital will present another appearance. I do not say that in a critical manner. It is inevitable that when a Minister, or a senior official responsible for the Health Service, visits a hospital all the members of the hospital staff are "on their toes" and a great many of the minor and sometimes major discomforts and embarrassments which trouble the ordinary citizen would not be immediately apparent to the Minister. But I should like to think that we had a Minister of Health, who, while carrying out his high administrative duties, was rather more aware than was indicated by the right hon. Gentleman's speech of some of the present intangible problems of the Health Service.
No one in the House is not very proud that immediately after the Second World War, when countries more wealthy than


our own did not dream of introducing any form of social aid so imaginative and so essential as our own scheme, we went ahead. I do not think that we should ever lose our sense of wonder at the courage and the kindness, and the hard labour, which went into getting our Health Service started. I will not nag hon. Members opposite about their part in this. I am sure that they feel ashamed of it. But we will pass on to the next stage.
Anyone who is seriously ill and needs surgical treatment, of any kind of mental or physical nursing, is served very well once they become a patient in our hospitals. I am leaving aside for the moment the minor irritations to patients and their relatives. It is very much better to be a patient in one of our great general hospitals, with the whole panoply of the hospital at the service of the patient—its machinery and its staff—than it is to be nursed in a private nursing home which simply cannot compete with the treatment provided in our great hospitals. Hon. Members on this side know that more than a decade of Conservative rule has not fundamentally undermined our Health Service—I do not know why hon. Members opposite are smiling. I should like to remind them that they did not work to start the Health Service. They did their best to make it a class service.
Let us solace ourselves by the knowledge of what we have to build on in the future, that we have this great Health Service. In addition to what is done by those suffering from serious illnesses, there is the maternity service. A young wife, who may be having her first child, may he shy and suffer embarrassment when she attends the ante-natal clinic. She may experience all kinds of irritations. She may even consider that she is being treated discourtously or brusquely because there is a lack of accommodation or a shortage of staff. But I have never heard of any mother who was not proud of the maternity service when it came to the real nursing problem, the delivery of her baby and the need to ensure that the birth took place in the best possible circumstances, and that everything was provided for herself and her child.
Hon. Members opposite must not be surprised if we on this side of the Committee take a very clear view of what is happening in our hospitals today, and

for what hon. Members opposite have been responsible during the past ten years. I know that the Minister would like us to concentrate on what is to happen in the next ten years. But we think that we shall be in charge then, and not hon. Members opposite. We are in full agreement with some of the Government's proposals. Indeed, we should like the Government to go ahead faster. Obviously, it is complete nonsense that a hospital or a region should have to plan from year to year. I am glad that this point has been taken up. It is one which some of us have been urging from the beginning of the scheme. We must have long-term planning for individual hospitals and hospital groups. The Minister cannot simply turn his back on the facts. We can come much closer than in the early days of the Health Service to seeing how in spirit the Conservative Party is so reluctant: to accept it.
I ask the Minister, when he talks about the recruitment of nurses, why had our nurses to fight so hard for a modest improvement in their remuneration? Against whom were they fighting? Why has there been this cat and mouse attitude towards finance in the past ten years, giving with one hand and taking back with the oilier, an atmosphere of uncertainty and discouragement created both among the staff and the management committees? The Minister knows that to be true. Why is it that one day we find that doctors and nurses are leaving the service and that then there has to be a drive to start bringing them back again? We do not think that that is the way the Health Service should be operated.
We want to see doctors rewarded, and rewarded generously, but we think that the nurses, the ward attendants, the physiotherapists and all the contributory services are entitled to be treated with the same consideration, that there should be one law governing all of them and that that law should be predictable so that they, too, can plan their personal lives and see what the service has to offer them.
Then I come to how much we can spend on the Health Service. No one on this side of the Committee says that we can spend an indefinite amount, because we cannot. How much we spend on our hospitals must be related to our total national income, to our expanding


economy and to what we are spending on education, housing and other services. What we do insist on, however, is that in fixing these priorities we should not talk about a few million pounds added one year or a few million pounds taken away another year, but that as a nation we should be planning five, ten or whatever number of years it may be ahead and whatever the percentage of our total national income it is.
If we want to get certainty into the expansion and future building programme of the hospitals, then, one, let us decide what the priority is and what percentage of the national product we are prepared to spend on hospitals. Secondly, we have to raise this money rather differently from the way in which we are doing it at present. There is no justification whatever for imposing a poll tax of 3s. 4d. a week on every man and woman who happens to be an insured worker. We want it to be widely known that a future Labour Government will end this totally unfair practice.
Of course, when the scheme was introduced many compromises were made. If there had been no compromises—[An HON. MEMBER: "Too many."] One of my hon. Friends says, "Too many". It may be that he would have been able to introduce the scheme with fewer. May be. but I am not quite certain that he would. We know perfectly well the hysterical opposition to the scheme in the early days. To get it started at all, certain compromises had to be made. They were made with our eyes open and quite deliberately, and it is the intention of the party on this side to see that those compromises which arose from the circumstances of the time are corrected at the earliest possible moment.
We have this weekly charge. That must go if we want the people to be proud of their service, to feel that they get from it what they need when sick and give to it what they can afford in relation to their income. There is no reason at all why the millionaire should be exempted from the 3s. 4d. poll tax and the worker should have to pay it. It is utterly hostile to the spirit of the scheme that anyone needing such simple things as dental treatment, dentures, spectacles and surgical aids should have to pay at the moment that they need the treatment. That, again, it must be

made quite clear, is something that must go. We cannot have public opinion poisoned against the Health Service because too many people feel that they are paying for it three times over, paying for it by the weekly poll tax, paying for it when the doctor gives them a prescription and paying for teeth and spectacles.
That is expenditure which is apt to fall more heavily on the elderly than on the rest of the population. In addition to paying in these ways, the people ere paying again in income tax. I hope that no one will ask: does that mean that no one will be making a contribution at all? We have to keep the balance and realise that although some people do not pay Income Tax, no one who eats at all, drinks at all or smokes at all is exempted from taxation. Indeed, at least 10s. in the £ of our taxation is raised by these indirect methods, so that even the poorest person is making some contribution.
I hope that we shall have the dignity, as a nation, not to lend ourselves to a great deal of the crude criticism made against foreign visitors who use the Health Service. This is illiterate, and I am sure that the Minister knows precisely what I mean when I say that a great deal of this criticism is illiterate. If we had a great book-keeping system in order to keep out the foreign visitor it would cost more than giving him the advantage of the service. Just as those below Income Tax level make their contribution in other forms of taxation, so do our visitors every time they buy food, drink or tobacco or spend money generally in the country. So do not let us tarnish a very wonderful idea by that kind of niggling, petty-minded attitude about it.
I am convinced that if we can plan a steady expansion of our Health Service, if we balance that with the housing programme it will make it more possible for more of the old people to be looked after in their own homes—because the two go together—and if we can finance the scheme in this straightforward and honourable way, which I have indicated, then we shall be in a mood to tackle the two other things which I want to mention.
I have talked about the amount of our national income which we spend on the scheme, but is the Minister satisfied that we are getting value for money? I


can remember the exciting developments in the early days when we were costing only dentures, artificial limbs and the rest. It was a challenge to make quite certain that the Government Departments were doing as good a job as any private enterprise could do in seeing that there was no slackness or waste—in other words, that there was value for money. The Minister knows the story of the early days.
What distresses me is that after those intervening years, about three months ago I went into the home in my constituency of an old lady of over 70 years of age who had an aural aid for the first time. She had it in her hand. It was the old-fashioned kind, not the transistor set. She was a delicate old lady and she did not know what to do with the aid. Instead of being a help to her, it was a worry and embarrassment. Her husband was a retired coal miner. They took about £60 of their limited savings so that, on the ordinary commercial market, she could be supplied with a small, neat aural aid. I ventured to say to the old couple that I thought that this was foolish, that they should have waited and that in time, no doubt, the old lady would have got a better type of aid. The fact is that these old aural aids ought not now to be supplied under the Health Service.
We want diversity in the Service. We want young and old to have a really good choice of spectacles under the Service. We do not want to say to them, "If you have National Health Service spectacles they must be the dowdy ones. If you want something smarter you must go to a private firm." We do not want to encourage advertisements saying, "If you want a really first-class aural aid you must go to private industry and pay an enormous sum for it." But these things are indicative of what is wrong with the service.
Inside the hospitals we need new wards, new equipment and new furnishings. Indeed, we need new hospitals. But if we get the spirit of the hospitals right, certain things can be dramatically improved which would not necessarily add greatly to the cost of running the Service. One thing which again is overdue is that the great specialists should

make up their minds whether they want to be inside or outside the Health Service.
When the Service was introduced it was essential to keep the great teaching hospitals within the scheme. It would have been disastrous if there had been a spate of inadequate nursing homes that were a kind of refugee centre for some of our ablest doctors. It was in the interest of British medicine, of our finest doctors and of the scheme that our specialists stayed within the scheme. We had to reassure them in those days.
There were so many fears. For instance, we were told that the State would interfere between doctor and patient. We know that that was nonsense. It was never intended and could not be done. But we had to wait until time could demonstrate just how wrong and really wicked that type of propaganda was which was put out on behalf of hon. Members opposite at that time.
We have now had the scheme operating long enough for our specialists to decide either to be entirely inside or outside. I do not see that we can get the appointments system put right, that we can get the courtesies beween specialists and patient; that we want to have universally unless this is done. I hasten to use the word "universally" because I am conscious that whenever one makes criticism of the Health Service what one is saying is true of some hospitals and specialists and wholly untrue of others.
I am the first to give grateful thanks and recognition of the wonderful work that many of our great specialists are doing as well as the general practitioner in bringing healing and hope to so many people. I ask that I be not misunderstood on this point. But again I say to the Minister that no one who has experience of going into out-patients' departments, no one who has experience of waiting while those they love are being cared for in hospital, can deny that in far too many hospitals there is a brusque or inconsiderate attitude both to the comfort of the family visiting and to the time that patients have to wait when they go into out-patients' departments.
There is a great deal more I could say, but other hon. Members have many contributions to make. I conclude by saying that I get a great many letters sent to me about the Health Service.


They go far beyond the confines of my constituency or of hospitals about which I can have direct personal knowledge. But these letters indicate in the most moving fashion just how grateful the vast majority of people in Great Britain are for their Health Service and just how outraged they are when they find that, in their personal experience, this great Service is often tarnished by quite unnecessary discourtesies which could be put right within the individual hospitals.
We want this Service to be truly national. I do not know whether there are class distinctions in Heaven or not. But there should be none in hospitals. Until we can make some of the amendments I have indicated, many people will be saddened, and beyond sadness will be worried, by the fear that those they love, when receiving treatment, are perhaps not getting the very best because they are Health Service patients and not private paying patients. That, above all, we on this side of the Committee must seek to remedy.

5.25 p.m.

Brigadier Sir Otho Prior-Palmer: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee). As always, her speech was controversial, constructive and charming. She is always worth listening to, but I hope that she will forgive me if I do not comment on many of the things she said. Hon. Members opposite say that they will make this thing or that thing free. Would they give us an idea of what they consider should be the ceiling cost of the National Health Service? We all know that they got the figure very seriously wrong once before. It would be interesting to know their estimate now.
I do not believe that anybody on either side of the Committee who has read the White Paper, the various pamphlets and the Blue Book, can fail to be impressed by the vast size and scope of these ten-year plans, amounting, as they do. to about £1,000 million, with a further £700 million to follow beyond that on the hospitals alone. I was glad to hear my right hon. Friend stress the contents of the Blue Book, because there are, as he knows, areas like my constituency where the care of the old outside hospitals in cottages and homes is even more vital

and important, and is, I regret to say, lacking so dreadfully in some things. We must congratulate the Minister on his power and his vision with regard to this great and enlightened scheme.
It is suggested that as a basis there should be 600 to 800 hospital beds per 100,000 population. This is all very well and good. But it may be—indeed, this often happens—that in working out all the details on the lower level of a great scheme like this people slip up, and slip up badly. I am sorry to have to say that already there are signs that the local planning is not matching up to the size and scope of the overall scheme. It is the duty of individual Members, borough councillors and others to keep a sharp and vigilant eye to see that things do not go dreadfully wrong. I make no apology for doing just this. I am glad my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary has arrived, because I have had considerable correspondence with him on this subject.
My right hon. Friend has put forward the idea of placing more responsibility on to the local authorities for looking after mental health. Administratively, this is a sound idea. But I wonder whether he realises what would be the effect. It would have an effect on the rates—and, goodness knows, my constituency, which has been harder hit than any other in the country, because it has no industry, really cannot take any further rate burden.
I do not want to take this aspect too far, because I shall be brought up with a jerk if I do. But I have said before that to continue the out-of-date system of rating by taxing the sort of house a person lives in, and not his ability to pay, is becoming quite ridiculous. If this matter had been tackled in the way that I suggested four years ago we would not have been running into the troubles we are now.
As long ago as 1960 I drew the attention of the Minister to the woeful situation in my constituency regarding Worthing Hospital. I make no apology for making what is virtually a constituency speech, because this matter really must be looked into. I first raised it in May, 1960, and then again in July, 1960—when there were two columns of HANSARD about it.
But discussions on this hospital were actually begun in February, 1956. A year later, nothing had happened. Further meetings took place in 1960, four years later. Still nothing had been done. Then the Ministry decided that it could not look at Worthing's hospital programme in isolation. That was four years later, and yet another year passed before anything else happened. A meeting was held which the hospital management committee only heard about afterwards. But now, at long last, we have a plan.
I suggest, and I hope to show, that although this plan is comprehensive it ignores very largely the local conditions and needs. The long promised development of Worthing Hospital in a modified way will take place at an indefinite date. Now there are 157 acute beds and this total is to be raised to 358—some time. No definite date has been given as to when the work is even likely to start.
At the same time, however, seven miles away and across a river, and removed from any bus route, Southlands Hospital is being enormously enlarged. This hospital is to serve Worthing. But this is completely cock-eyed planning. The reason put by the Ministry is that Southlands Hospital must serve Shoreham as well—it is practically in Shoreham—and that is reasonable, but it also has to serve Littlehampton, which is seven miles on the other side of Worthing.
Worthing is the geometrical and geographic centre of this area. Why, therefore, should not Worthing Hospital receive expenditure to a far greater extent than is visualised? At present, the hospital deals with 55,000 out-patients and casualty patients a year. It has no less than 600 operations outstanding. The waiting time of out-patients for only a consultation is it) to 12 weeks.

Mr. Denis Howell: The hon. and gallant Gentleman's constituents are lucky.

Sir O. Prior-Palmer: Let the hon. Gentleman tell my people that. Worthing has twice the national average of old people. I have had almost continuous correspondence with my right hon. Friend, and we can get nothing but the vaguest possible assurances.
It must be realised that most of the relatives of patients in Southlands Hos-

pital will not be able to visit them. There are no communications whatever. It is much too far away. Further, the doctors say that this is most inconvenient. They wonder how they will be able to manage.
I quote from one of my hon. Friend's letters:
The Board naturally have taken into account such matters as the distribution of population a Id transport facilities.
That is precisely what the board has not done. It has not taken into account the population. Worthing now has a population of 80,000. This will shortly increase to 100,000. On the basis of the White Paper, we should have, or be working up to, 800 beds. Three hundred and fifty-nine beds are visualised in the dim and distant future.
This project, which is part and parcel of the great scheme, has been looked at by somebody on what I suppose is a tidy paper basis with no regard whatever to the human aspect, which is, after all, the basis of any hospital. I am very glad that my right hon. Friend the Minister is here, because I do not suppose that he has heard anything about this. I hope that he will accede to my appeal that a meeting should take place on this subject between a representative of the Ministry, a representative of the regional hospital board, a representative of the hospital management committee, the Press, representatives of the local borough council, which is extremely angry about this, and some of the doctors.
Let us thrash it out round the table and see whether we can work out something more sensible. It would be a very great pity to spoil this great scheme by getting it all wrong at the lower level at its inception.

5.37 p.m.

Mr. Llywelyn Williams: I find myself in complete agreement with the remarks made in the moving speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee). Like her, I am not a flag-waving Jingo, but I believe that our National Health Service is the finest health service in the whole world, despite incursions made into it by the Conservative Government during the last ten years. Other countries—Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand and France—may have better social insurance schemes than ours. They probably have a finer family allowance system than we have, but we can


still legitimately claim to have the finest health service in the world.
My hon. Friend said that there must be obvious limitations at some stage or other to the capital which is injected into the Service. This goes without saying. Every reasonable person knows that there must be a limit at some time. The Minister will appreciate the aptness of a quotation from one of Robert Browning's poems:
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for?
Perhaps the spirit of Robert Browning will allow me to transpose one word:
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's an Opposition for?
That is the nub of some of the discussion which has already taken place this afternoon.
Inevitably, there must be a gap between proposals suggested to the Minister in terms of capital and maintenance expenditure and the actual allocations made to regional hospital boards and, from regional hospital boards, to hospital management committees. This principle must operate all down the line. In all sorts of societies there must be a differential. Politically speaking, that is what the argument is about, whether the gap between what is asked for and what the Minister is prepared to give should be as wide as it is or whether the gap should be considerably narrowed.
The Minister has suggested the figure of 2 per cent. Some of us would have different ideas about an expanding hospital service. We would suggest that 2 per cent. is the wrong figure to represent the gap between the proposals made and the allocations made. The Opposition do not live in a fool's paradise. We know that when, after the next election, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) becomes Minister of Health, he will not be in a position to turn all the financial taps on at full speed. If all Ministers turned the financial taps on at full speed, Whitehall would be drowned. We know that there must be limitations. Sometimes we are entitled to ask whether these differentials are justified in all instances.
Teaching hospitals receive a grant for research purposes. An award has been made for better salary scales for laboratory technicians. Therefore, if the grants for research remain stationary, there must obviously be a cutting back on research work. This would be very unfortunate. I do not know how the Minister feels about this he must know about it.
I know from my observation that many of our top research men, not only in medicine, but in science generally, in London particularly—I am sure that this is equally true in the provinces—spend an absurdly large amount of their time running round to various foundations trying to get donations and grants to enable them to carry on with their research work. In a sense, they are seeking to justify themselves and the projects on which they are engaged. These are eminent men. They are men of exceptional ability who are doing tremendously important research work. It is infra dig that men of this calibre should be competing one with the other, running to the Ford Foundation, or the Rockefeller Foundation, or some other foundation, almost cap in hand, begging for new or additional grants to enable them to carry on their research work.
The Minister must take cognisance of this unfortunate feature of our Health Service. I sometimes speak with some of these eminent men from the London teaching hospitals. Some of their remarks reveal an unhappy mood of cynicism. I was speaking to one the other day. He seriously suggested that we might well have to follow the example of Ireland and Australia and have a State lottery to finance our hospitals. It seems that this is the only way to provide them with the large sums they require. It is regrettable that people of such eminence feel compelled even to think on such lines. I would regard it as a terribly retrogressive way of raising the necessary money to finance our hospitals if we had to intensify the gambling fever which, in all conscience, is already too prevalent in this country.
I have heard some of these eminent men speak with envy of the wonderful new hospitals in countries which we normally regard as very backward compared with Britain. Spain has built 39 hospitals in the last five years. Wonderful


new hospitals are being erected in the Iron Curtain countries—for instance, in East Germany and Czechoslovakia. I heard remarks to the effect that it is sometimes doubtful who won the last war, since countries ordinarily regarded as backward countries are able to take such progressive steps in the construction of new hospitals.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North, directed the Minister's attention, I think rightly, to the dangers of postponing maintenance work so as to deal with urgent and unavoidable commitments. The Minister should at least be warned against cuts which, in the end, prove to be uneconomic and unbusinesslike. I base this remark on the old adage, "Penny wise, pound foolish". For instance, I believe that we are still paying very dearly for the almost idiotic recommendation of the Willink Committee to cut down by 10 per cent. the intake of medical students. That was regarded possibly as an economic operation, but I think that its effect has been very deleterious.
I know of a case in which Ministry sanction was necessary for the provision of nurses' accommodation. Probably because of the economic pressures which obtained in those days, there was an unconscionable delay in giving approval for this project, with the result that the project was in practical terms dashed to the ground. The would-be seller discovered another customer. As a result, the hospital concerned has to pay twice the original sum for accommodation very similar to the initial accommodation sought. By cheese-paring economy in maintenance there is obviously the danger that in the final analysis the economy will prove to be very false.
I have been studying some of the financial statements of the Welsh Regional Hospital Board. I think that I may be the only Welsh Member to be called to speak today. I notice that the board is very concerned, as all hospital boards are, with the differentials between their proposals and the allocations. I apologise to the hon. arid learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson). I was referring to Welsh Labour representation in the House, of course. (have no doubt that the hon.

and learned Member will also speak for Wales, if he catches the eye of the Chair.
I welcome the change in the estimates procedure contained in the Ministry Circular of September, 1961, based on the review conducted by a departmental working party. The circular stressed
the need for a forward look for several years ahead which will enable plans for the immediate future to be viewed as a phase in a longer course of development, possibly as much as five years ahead.
I have been studying the forward-look revenue estimates for 1963–64 and 1964–65 in an analysis of probable additional expenditure of the Welsh Regional Board and hospital management committees. It can be summed up in one sentence:
The additional amount of £793,800 for 1963–64 represents an increase of 3·2 per cent. over 1962–63, whilst the amount of £341,900 for 1964–65 shows an increase of 1·3 per cent.
In the light of the circumstances, I would not call these increases very extravagant or exciting.
The Minister recommended that the rate of growth of total expenditure in 1962–63 should, in real terms, be about 2 per cent., but Mr. T. W. Jeffreys, treasurer of the Welsh Hospital Board, has said:
This means, in effect, that increments, general increases in prices, and new developments coming into operation next year will have to be contained within this sum.
I repeat, I do not regard this as a wildly exciting increase.
All the departments want money, and the establishment of true priorities must inevitably mean some cuts—those are concomitants, I am sure—but does the Minister feel happy about same of the cuts? I hear an hon. Friend call them niggling, and that is a very apt description. In a Written Answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Mr. Idwal Jones) on 25th March last, the Minister said that at the Denbigh Mental Hospital there had recently been a cut in pocket money of £800, and a cut in cinema shows of £540. Does the Minister feel very happy about miserable cuts like that affecting people whose lives are already darkened and bewildered?
The right hon. Gentleman also stated, and I am rather surprised at it, that
… margarine is a normal item of diet."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th March, 1963; Vol. 674. c. 112.1


The Welsh people have not been brought up on margarine, but on butter. The Minister knows nothing at all about the ordinary Welsh peasant folk, the stock from which I come, if he believes that margarine is the stable item of their diet. I ask him to investigate this matter.
An investigation carried out recently by the National Union of Public Employees revealed that under many hospital management committees there has been considerable pruning of staffs. Auxiliary workers are usually rather far down the wage scale, but they have had their overtime reduced. That will be a strong disincentive to workers on low rates of pay, because it is the overtime that makes that employment satisfying. Others have been declared redundant. If there is a shortage of these workers their duties devolve on the nurses and that, in turn, will act as a disincentive to the recruitment of nurses. Nurses do not enter the profession to scrub floors—

Mr. John Baird: I do not know whether I understood my hon. Friend correctly, but was he suggesting that medical auxiliaries should have overtime? I believe, as all good trade unionists should, that we have to push up the basic wage and do without overtime.

Mr. Williams: That is a very searching question. I can only say that a report by a very reputable trade union shows a sense of grievance that kitchen workers, gardners and ancillary workers are able to get a fairly reasonable wage packet only by working overtime. That was my point.
Nurses should, in theory, be working only 44 hours a week but, being human like the rest of us, they take a dim view of working in some areas for considerably longer hours than that without receiving anything in the way of overtime. Representations on that point have been made to me. We should not take advantage of those who have entered such a noble profession as nursing, which many enter from a sense of vocation.
The Minister may like to hear a word of praise. I think very highly of the ideas contained in Circular 8/63—Report on

Accident and Emergency Services based on the Report of the Sub-Committee of the Central Health Services Council Standing Medical Advisory Committee. What a mouthful! I refer particularly to paragraph 2—Sections 3 and 4 of the circular—based on paragraph 106 of the Report, which states:
The Minister agrees that co-operation between hospitals and the ambulance services is important, and that every effort should be made to achieve perfect co-ordination particularly in regard to

(a) arrangements for providing the hospital with a warning of numbers and types of injured persons by radio direct from the scene of the accident;
(b) arrangements also for enabling the hospital staff to report to a medical officer on the cause of injuries and condition of the patient,"

In these days of slaughter on the roads, and carnage which seems likely to increase in the years ahead—a frightful thought—the Minister will do well to implement as soon as possible the more important of the excellent recommendations of Sir Harry Platt's Committee.
I confess, however, that I am rather staggered by Recommendation 11, which states:
An accident and emergency unit should have at least, 50 accident beds.
That is a tall order, and as things are now it would more or less rule out Wales altogether. There axe not hospitals in Wales that could possibly meet that qualification.
Speaking of Wales, I want to refer to the shortage of hospital beds for expectant mothers. There is something very slap-happy about the present arrangements, as was brought out at the last meeting of the Newport and East Monmouthshire Hospital Management Committee. It seems that the deciding criterion now operating for entry into !hospital is not the condition of the mother in terms of possible difficulties and complications during the birth of the child, but the date of application for entry to the hospital. In this type of case, such a criterion is absurd. A Caesarean operation is not postponable for five or six months, like a hernia operation.
I cannot understand this. More and more expectant mothers wish to have their confinements in hospital so more and more beds must be made available.
In the Panteg Hospital in Monmouthshire, 100 mothers are admitted each month, but 250 applications are received. Mr. J. M. Bowen, the gynaecologist in the area, has said that a number of those admitted were perfectly capable of having their babies at home, but were getting hospital beds merely because they had booked much earlier. That does not make much sense at all. Some sort of panel should investigate these conditions.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North, I commend the Minister for the exciting potentialities—at this stage, I can only call them potentialities—inherent in his proposals set out in the Plans for the Health and Welfare Services of the Local Authorities in England and Wales. All power to him to carry out, with and through local authorities, those imaginative proposals, but the local authorities must have the tools to carry out the job. They cannot possibly bring this scheme to fruition unless the Ministry gives them much more substantial financial help.
In the Sunday Citizen, last Sunday, there was a very stimulating article on the drug industry by Mr. George Pollock, who had some very heart-searching things lo say. The Health Service's drug bill has gone up by £3 million over the previous year, bringing it up to £100 million. I know that these drugs have saved literally thousands of lives—we could rival each other in paying tribute to the life-saving character of some of them—hut it has become a big business, with a turnover of £220 million a year and an export contribution of £50 million a year. It is spending £10 million a year on research. Forty firms show an average return on invested capital of 24 per cent.—a pretty good profit margin by any standards.
The point that Mr. Pollock makes is that the industry should never have been allowed to function in an atmosphere of free enterprise. We should not talk of drugs in terms of free competition, buttressed by advertisements, by high pressure on doctors and by free samples ad lib. to the extent of £800,000 in one year. This is too important a part of the Health Service for it to be freely at the whim and caprice of big business. I certainly support my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North, when he spoke of a statutory check. Lord Cohen's Com-

mittee turned down 247 drugs as being of no use at all, and said that seven were particularly harmful, but we want something much stronger than a recommending, committee. We need one on the lines suggested by my hon. Friend.
The Minister has a wonderful heritage. By the fluctuations of political fortune, he has been allowed to administer something of which I feel proudest in the life of Britain—and I say that quite honestly and truthfully. Because of the vicissitudes of politics he may not have the opportunity to administer it much longer but, in the time at his disposal, I beg him to strengthen and expand the Health Service. It may be the best in the world, but it will not remain so unless it is an expanding service. It must expand, and I hope that the Minister will take "expansion" as his watchword for the future.

6.4 p.m.

Sir David Robertson: It is always pleasant to follow a Welsh Member, and I am happy on this occasion to follow the hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. Ll. Williams). I feel that lam a brother Celt. I am most appreciative of what the Welsh Group have done for their country in this House during the twenty-four years I have been here.
I enjoyed the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee). I confess to her that I am one of the guilty men—not the young men behind me—who, in my generation, were rather proud of their charity health service. Now, we have something very much better. I have said publicly before, and I say it again, that I am ashamed of having voted against the National. Health Service at every stage because I have learned how good it is and what a wonderful service it gives to all the people. It was fitting that the hon. Lady should be the first speaker from the Opposition back benches. As we all have I have wonderful memories of her husband and the work which he did in founding the Service.
I compliment my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health on the very fine report which he gave to the House today. When I was a London Member, for eleven years, I used to take part in these debates, but, since I became a Highland Member, I have not done so because so frequently


they have related to England and Wales, and not Scotland, and I have become a very parochial Member. The points I wish to make now concern the Highlands.
Our fine National Health Service works very unequally. Constituents of mine are being ordered to Inverness and, occasionally, to Edinburgh and Glasgow for treatment. They are expected to pay all their expenses. Other citizens in the populous areas enjoy the full benefit of the Health Service and frequently they have a hospital just round the corner, or not very far away. My constituency, as my right hon. Friend knows, is very different; the journey from the north coast to Inverness is about 160 or 180 miles. Frequently, it involves a journey to a railway station of six or seven miles, then a long and weary train journey, and, of course, it causes a great deal of expense.
It is wrong that the great majority of the people should have the Service free while people in my area have to face journeys like that. I know that it is the Government's wish that we should continue to occupy the more distant parts of the country. We cannot all crowd into the monsters of London and the South-East, Birmingham, Coventry and the West Midlands—very unpleasant places to live in because of the travelling difficulties, and so on.
I urge my right hon. Friend to give very serious thought to the problem in my constituency. Highland people generally are proud people. They have never applied for National Assistance. They do not like to be compelled to go to the National Assistance Board to recover the fares and, of course, it is a matter of pounds to them. Moreover, if a child has to make the journey for a tonsil operation, the mother or the father, sometimes both, have to stay overnight. A few days ago, I asked a Question about a poor, semi-blind woman who, although so frail, had to make the journey from Castletown to Inverness and back. When he investigates that case a little further, my right hon. Friend will realise how strongly I am entitled to feel about it.

Dr. Barnett Stross: I intervene to ask the hon. Gentleman to remember that, when the Act was implemented in 1948, there was

provision made for the cost of travelling and, if necessary, the expenses of a friend to accompany the patient and stay overnight.

Sir D. Robertson: I remember that; the hon. Gentleman is quite right. But, of course, the background to all this tightness of money is that poor old Britain is always doing too much. She is doing too much now in finding money for defence and all the other things.
Why cannot we have equal treatment in Caithness, Sutherland and Ross-shire? We have very fine doctors and surgeons there. This practice of sending more and more people long journeys seems to be fundamentally wrong. Could the reason be that our hospitals are hopelessly out of date? There is nothing wrong with the personnel—medical staff. surgical staff or nurses. Something must be causing it. Is it that the consultants and specialists in Inverness do not want to make the journey to the patients? That would be a much more sensible thing to do once a week or once a month.
The fundamental reason, I believe, is that our hospitals are obsolete and out of date. There are two in Caithness. One is in an old house, formerly the house of the Tory Member for the County of Caithness in the days where there were three constituencies in the area which I now represent. It was given to the community at about the beginning of this century. I do not know how long the other hospital in Thurso has been there. I should not be surprised if it were seventy-five or a hundred years old.
Caithness is the only Highland county which has had an increase in population in the last decade. Before the last election, it was up by 20 per cent., thanks to Dounreay. Thurso has now a population of about 10,000 compared with about 2,500 in 1950. Yet no provision has been made and our two ancient hospitals still have to deal with the community there. It is not good enough.
I have pressed for years for a new hospital. In November, 1959, I received a letter from the then Secretary of State for Scotland, who said:
The Northern Regional Hospital Board have for some time had in mind the provision of a centralised hospital for Caithness as one of the larger building projects to be undertaken in their region, and although they have not yet finally decided on the size of


this proposed new hospital or on the use to be made in the future of existing hospitals, the project now occupies a high position on their priority list.
That was 1959.
The next day, I sent a reply to the then Secretary of State, in which I said:
I have no doubt that the Northern Regional Hospital Board have for some time had in mind the provision of a centralised hospital for Caithness and I am absolutely certain that they will still have it in mind for a very long time before any building takes place".
It is sixteen years since the National Health Service was founded, but we in the far North of Scotland till have those two ancient hospital buildings in action. Yet that was the view of the active Northern Regional Hospital Board.
If I had anything to do with that board, should sack the lot and find a new one. Unwittingly, perhaps—it is so polite and kind to many people—it has, I fear, become the "stooge" of the Treasury. Someone at the top of the table says that the project cannot be undertaken because of something or other—nuclear weapons, or whatever it may be—and that is the end of it. However, we are not standing for any more of it. The people are getting very upset. I urge my right hon. Friend to press on with a centralised hospital for Caithness.
Once again, I say how proud I am of the National Health Service, irrespective of the parochial difficulties which beset my constituents. Hon. Members opposite, of course, have greater reason to be proud of it, because they fought so courageously to bring it in, and I congratulate them on doing so, but I hope that they will always bear in mind that we have today a great Minister of Health. Every fair-minded man will agree that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) is doing the very best that he can.

Mr. Charles Loughlin: He is sometimes misguided.

Sir D. Robertson: That is just a different point of view. No one would really challenge that my right hon. Friend is an outstanding Minister.

6.13 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir D. Robertson) always

treats us to a very robust speech and always speaks eloquently about the problems of the Highlands. The problems of the Highlands today are nothing compared with that they will be when Dr. Beeching's proposals are carried out. After Dr. Beeching has done his dirty work in the Highlands, I shall be coming to the House to complain about maternity cases having to go to hospital on horseback.
Always, during these debates, we have expressions of fine sentiment and the production of ambitious plans for the future development of the Service. The nearer we come to an election, the greater is the spate of documents, plans and proposals. We have had from the two Health Departments their ten-year Hospital Plans. In recent days, we have had the production of the health and welfare plans of the Minister in England, though not in Scotland, for the next ten years. Occasionally, however, after we have digested the Reports and fine plans projected into the future, we, as Members of Parliament, are brought back to earth. We are made to face the hard facts which every Member knows to exist in the Service. Undoubtedly, every Member knows that the Health Service is suffering grievously from a chronic lack of funds. Anyone who goes about his constituency with his eyes open knows this to be true.
Why is this? Briefly, the answer is that the approach to the financing of the Health Service is entirely different from the approach to the financing of other services. In. passing, I refer to the way in which this country was committed to expenditure of £300 million or £400 million by the Prime Minister going to Nassau and signing on the dotted line, without let or hindrance by this House. We do not know what the cost of that agreement will be, but we can be sure that it will be four or five times as much as the total cost of the ten-year development programme for hospitals in Scotland. It was accepted without any kind of debate, with the minimum of information being given by the Government. Yet everyone will, surely, admit that our health services are at least as important in defence as the Army, the Navy, or the Air Force. A very good Health Service is part of our defence system.
I shall give one or two illustrations of the meanness of the Government in their financing of these services. When the Minister at the Dispatch Box gives us a welter of statistics, he fails to understand the problem. It would be amazing if, twenty years after a world war, he could not tell us that the Service had expanded. The question is, has the expansion been adequate for the needs of the time? Has it had its fair allocation of national resources? The answer must be a resounding "No".
I take up a point raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Abertillery (Mr. Ll. Williams) and for Cannock (Miss Lee), about which I have spoken in the House before. The nurses were some of the first victims of the Government's ill-advised wage freeze, an attack which was concentrated on the most helpless and most dedicated sections of the community, the nurses, the teachers, the probation officers, and the rest. After an enormous campaign, they eventually got a 7½ per cent. increase on what were already miserably inadequate salaries. There was no doubt about the direction in which the sympathies of the public lay at that time.
I wish to call attention to a speech made by a Minister who is still in office, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. He was quoted in The Times on 2nd June last year as having referred to the nurses' increases in these terms:
The most striking feature of that claim by far is what I can only describe as a conspiracy on the part of the Press, the radio, and all normal methods of public information to conceal from the public the full facts.
He went on to talk about what the cost of the demand of the nurses would be—one Polaris submarine. That is what it would have cost. He went on to say that, after paying for their board and lodging, nurses had money left which was really pocket money. This is the Government's attitude to people who are giving the most dedicated service that this country has ever known.
I turn to the recent Industrial Court award of 27th April which reveals the same crazy, mean attitude. The results of that are that the first-year student nurse gets a pay increase of £4 a year, but her board and lodging go up £7 a year.
Therefore, the net increase is minus £3. What applies to the student nurse applies to the nursing auxiliaries, the State-enrolled nurses and all the junior staff. They will get less money under this award.
Of course, there are gains at the top, and no doubt that is why the Royal College of Nursing has welcomed the award as being a reward for experience. It says that it improves career prospects. That attitude may be understandable, but I think that it is very short-sighted, if not selfish, because the future efficiency of the service obviously depends on the attraction of more and more recruits to it who must start at the bottom.

Lord Balniel: I understood that the award was welcomed by the Student Nurses Association on the ground that the remission of board and lodging charges for periods of 48 hours or more away from hospital more than offset the small increase in board and lodging charges for a shorter period.

Mr. Hamilton: That is the sort of attitude that we get from hon. Members opposite. Why do not the Government have the courage to say, "These people are doing a job which over the years has been consistently underpaid. They are being consistently exploited by this country. This will not do." I do not care what the student nurses say or what the Royal College of Nursing says. We in the House of Commons shall decide what they are worth. How on earth anyone can defend a wage award which results in people receiving less, I do not know.
However, the award has this advantage from the Government's point of view: it might divide the profession. This is a familiar pattern. The Minister of Education did exactly the same with the teachers by readjusting a negotiated award and increasing differentials in one part of the profession as against another. It may be that that is the intention here. Of course, this award must go to the Whitley Council. I hope that it will turn it out with the contempt which it deserves.
What is the next step for the nurses? I think that what my hon. Friend the Member for Abertillery said was right. These people do an awful lot of overtime and extra duty, and are expected to do it, for which they get no overtime pay


whatever. This extra duty is unavoidable in the nature of the profession. I think that the time has come when the House should say that they ought to be paid for overtime. They should be paid extra for weekend duties, night duty, bank holidays, and the rest. This has been accepted for almost all workers in nearly every other trade and profession, and I see no reason why the nurses should be singled out any longer.
If we look at the way in which the Government have treated the doctors, a vastly different story emerges. Here there is a powerful trade union not unwilling to use the threat of the strike weapon if need be. Fellows like Ted Hill, Frank Cousins and Will Carron are like meek and mild choir boys compared with the British Medical Association. The result is that the doctors had a 12½ per cent. increase in 1959–60 and a 14 per cent. increase in 1963–64, making a total increase of 26½ per cent. in the last five years. Why was not the recent 14 per cent. increase referred to the National Incomes Commission? Will the nurses' award be so referred? What is the reason for the distinction between Scottish plumbers and Scottish doctors?
Unless we can obtain and hold an efficient, well qualified, well paid and contented staff, all the grandiose schemes which the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland continually put before us for new buildings and for the extension of community care will count for nought. The Minister knows better than anybody.he tremendous shortages in the Health Service. They were pinpointed by the Young-husband Report, and very little has happened since then to overcome them.
I turn to the specific Scottish question that I wish to raise. There is a £70 million Hospital Plan for Scotland over ten years. I have sought to put this £70 million in its perspective, although the White Paper makes clear that it is not a firm commitment. One of the plan's major objectives is adequate maternity bed accommodation. It admits, however, that in many places that accommodation at the moment is woefully inadequate, not least in Fife. The County of Fife is thoroughly dissatisfied with the treatment that it has had from the Minister.
Before I develop that point, I want to quote a letter which puts the matter

in perspective. It came from a lady in Perthshire who has a daughter in the new town of Glenrothes. She says:
I am wondering if you can do anything at all for mothers-to-be in Glenrothes. Fife. There are at least five new churches and no hospitals. They are taken to Craigtown, 25 miles away, or Netherlea, which is over 30 miles from Glenrothes. As it is a community of young married couples, this condition of affairs should no longer be allowed to continue. My daughter who lives there had to go to Craigtown for her first baby and now has to go to Netherlea in Newport. It is bad enough not having a hospital nearer, but to go 30 miles under present road conditions is ridiculous. Also the ambulance that takes these mothers only has a driver. I wrote to Dr. Mercer of East Fife Hospital Board and `his reply was that this was quite usual. Imagine an expectant mother leaving Glenrothes far a 30-mile journey sitting beside the driver. When she got to Cupar she asked the driver to stop as she needed to lie down so that the poor girl was alone in the ambulance while the driver drove like hell to get her to Newport. Surely one of the first things when planning a new town is a hospital.
I had to write back to her and tell her that the Government were too busy allowing bingo halls and betting shops to provide adequate hospital facilities, which we now do not have in Fife. There is no provision in the ten-year plan for any additional maternity beds in Fife, although I understand that after great pressure the regional hospital board has promised seventy more by 1970. The Secretary of State has refused to meet a deputation on the matter and the whole of Fife, irrespective of party affiliations, is outraged by his arrogant contempt for this vital issue.
I could go on about other shortcomings in the Service, not only in Fife but in other parts of the country. The right hon. Gentleman knows very well of the inadequacy of the provision for geriatrics. Indeed, the inadequacy in Fife in this respect is even worse than it is for maternity beds. We should welcome the challenge of old age as one to be gladly and boldly taken up, and there is no reason why it should not be solved, provided that we devote to it the resources which we all want to devote to it.
When the Minister produced his plan for the development of community care. he produced certain figures of costs and so on. I do not think that the plan says how much of this will be borne by the local authorities. It simply says that a large part of it will be taken care of by


the general grant proposals, but certain it is that there will be a greatly increased burden on the already overburdened local authorities. This will re-emphasise the need for refashioning the financial structure of local government.
When does the Secretary of State for Scotland intend to produce his plan for community care? It is probably true that in this respect the position in Scotland is worse than that in England, but in any case we have the right to know exactly what the problem is and how the right hon. Gentleman and the local authorities hope to meet it, not only in a paper plan, but how he intends to get the additional staff and the additional auxiliaries who will no doubt be needed.
I promised to make a fairly short speech, and I want to say this in conclusion. When he spoke this afternoon, the Minister, as he always does, gave us a highly efficient, polished and informed speech. There was an enormous measure of what I would call cold complacency in it, bolstered up by a mass of statistics. My own view, and I think that it would be the view of the Committee, is that plans and planners, especially in health matters, must not be carried away by statistical information, but must be enormously imbued with humanity. This the Minister is singularly lacking.
As I go round the hospitals in my constituency, as other Members go around theirs, I cannot but be appalled on occasions by the amount of work still remaining to be done. In other directions, one can see equally appalling waste with what seem to be grossly inadequate returns for the expenditure of the money. One is bound to question the priorities of our society. We have to devote much more of our national and human resources to this worth-while work in the provision of hospital services and the provision by local authorities and to the co-ordination of the three great partners in this highly-civilised venture on which we are now embarking.

6.36 p.m.

Sir Samuel Storey: As one of those who in the voluntary hospital days took an active part in their first efforts to co-ordinate their individual efforts into a complementary whole, as one who throughout the Beveridge de-

bates constantly advocated a National Health Service, and as one who was not in the House in 1948, I have no need to apologise for having voted against the National Health Service, as my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir D. Robertson) did. Anyone who appreciates the need for this country to increase its productivity and develop its exports must appreciate that ill health is something which we cannot afford. Even if conscience allowed us to neglect the ill and disabled, the provision of a National Health Service to keep people fit, to restore them when ill and to enable them to play their full part in the economy is an investment paying high dividends. I therefore listened with interest to what my right hon. Friend had to say about the progress already made and his plans for the future. I am sure we all feel that he has done a magnificent job and hope that he will long be able to continue with his plans.
The real purpose of my intervening in this debate is to raise the question of the availability of nursing staff in some parts of the country. My right hon. Friend has told us that whole-time and student nurses were reaching a record number. That sounds strange to some of us who like yourself, Mr. Royle, come from the north of England, particularly those who have experience of the West Manchester hospital district. In my constituency, in one hospital alone, 80 out of 415 beds are out of action, most of them in two wards which have recently been rewired and renovated but which are out of action because of shortage of nursing staff.
Every effort to recruit has been made, by advertising in many parts of the country as well as the rural areas and the development districts—where the demand for women workers is not so great—by keeping in touch with careers mistresses and senior girls in the schools and by close co-operation with the youth employment authorities, but it has not been possible to recruit either fully trained nurses, or the student nurses who become the trained nurses of the future.
This failure presents two questions. The first is whether the vocational call to nurse is losing its appeal; the other is whether the conditions of pay and service in the industrial areas are such


as to overcome the attraction of the five-day week arid the higher wages offered by industry.
These questions call for a full inquiry and an early answer followed by prompt action, for without an adequate nursing staff the programme of hospital service expansion is useless, and without an adequately staffed hospital service we shall not be able to make the best use of our manpower. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. Friend or whoever replies will tell the Committee what steps are being taken to ease the present staffing situation in the areas where there is a real shortage.

6.40 p.m.

Dr. Barnett Stross: I have noticed a great similarity between the two sides of the Committee in this debate. Every hon. Member who has spoken has referred to shortcomings and grievances, and, as the hon. Member for Stretford (Sir S. Storey) did just now, to the shortage of nurses. There is, however, one difference between the two sides of the Committee. Whereas hon. Members on both sides put forward grievances and grumble about the present situation, hon. Gentlemen opposite join one another in congratulating the Minister on his achievements.
Much of the Minister's speech, perhaps quite rightly, was devoted to tie hospital service, and in passing he mentioned the ten-year plan for the improvement of local authority services. Not a word has been said today about the general practitioner. I am told that he is doing all right, but I should like to analyse the present position to see whether this is in fact so. I cannot understand why there is no ten-year plan to help general practitioners who form the pivot of the Service.
There are 22,000 general practitioners, and they ought to be given some consideration and included in our thoughts. The total cost of the domiciliary service for England, Wales and Scotland is about £90 million. This represents about 11 per cent. of the total cost of the National Health Service, and it is estimated that about 95 per cent. of the medical care is provided out of this sum. It may not always be very well provided, but it is, nevertheless, provided out of that figure.
Also out of this figure of £90 million the general practitioner must pay for his premises and for the staff he employs. If he does not employ staff to assist him he suffers, and so do his patients. He may be too greedy or too poor to employ staff to assist him, but if he does, whether they be nurses or secretaries, he must pay their salaries. He has to buy all his surgical instruments. He has to pay his own telephone bills.

Mr. W. Hamilton: He is worse off than a Member of Parliament.

Dr. Stross: I have figures to prove that the general practitioner is, in fact, in some respects worse off than a Member of Parliament. Certainly the mortality rate is higher among G.P.s than it is among M.P.s and that is saying something.
Out of the general practitioners' per capita fee of 19s. 6d. it is thought that 12s. should represent his net gain, and 7s. 6d. his expenses. This is a disincentive to a general practitioner providing proper amenities for his patients and looking after himself properly, because it means that the less he spends out of his so-called national allowance for expenses, the more he puts in his pocket. The better his practice, the better the premises he provides and the more he gives his patients, the more he is compelled to put his hand in his pocket and pay out of his own money to keep his practice going. This is not the right way to encourage people to do the right thing, and I hope that the Minister agrees with me about this. Practices differ considerably. Some are excellent, and some are bad. Between the two extremes one finds a great variety, but it all comes down to the fact that the fewer the facilities provided by the doctor for his patients, the better off he is financially.
The general practitioner is a self-employed man. All the other workers in the Service have contracts of service. The general practitioner is the last remnant of the rugged individualist, and he pays heavily for this privilege. The price he pays is that, first, workers in other parts of the Service live ten years longer than he does. Secondly, he tends to get his first attack of coronary thrombosis in the early fifties. This happens to about one in five G.Ps. and there is one chance in fourteen that the attack will prove fatal. I speak with some feeling


about this because my partner died from coronary thrombosis at the age of 46. I had my first attack when I was 51. I had been out of practice and in this House for six years, and I think that I would have died from my first attack had I still been in practice. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Morley (Dr. Broughton) will confirm what I have said.

Dr. A. D. D. Broughton: Dr. A. D. D. Broughton (Batley and Morley) indicated assent.

Dr. Stross: I am glad that my hon. Friend agrees with me.
How does the general practitioner try to remedy the situation in which he finds himself? He does it in two ways. First, by working in a partnership. The majority of partnerships are between two people. This is better than working in isolation, but it means that if one doctors goes off duty the other has to do a double stint. It is therefore far better to have a partnership of three or four doctors.
The second method is to have a group practice. If three or more doctors are working together, preferably from one set of premises, life begins to be much more normal, but even these group practices cannot compare with a proper system of working from health centres, and I think that today there are about fifteen of these centres. The Health Service has been in operation for fifteen or sixteen years and we have fifteen centres. Two are in Stoke-on-Trent, one of which is in my constituency.

Mr. Laurence Pavitt: There are seventeen centres.

Dr. Stross: My hon. Friend tells me that there are seventeen. I am sure that they are not all satisfactory. I am sure that they have not all solved the problem of co-operation and co-ordination between the medical and other staff who work in them. The questions that we have to ask ourselves are what has gone wrong, and why they are not popular? I think the answer is that general practitioners, who are paid per capita fees, are unable to co-operate among themselves, let alone co-operate with workers in the welfare services. This is because the general practitioner is self-employed, while the people working with him are public employees.
This creates a special difficulty. I therefore suggest that we need to carry out an experiment. Certain parts of Scotland would lend themselves very well to this. It may be that it is already being done there; I am not conversant with the techniques adopted in Scotland. What we should do is to set up a number of health centres to serve the whole population within agreed areas. They would be staffed with doctors, nurses, health visitors, social workers and therapists, who would co-operate as a team and set out to practise not only curative but preventive medicine, in its true sense.
Centres of this type might solve the problem, which has not yet been properly solved. If we could ensure the evolution of teams doing this work, we would be able to show that the general practitioner gains freedom rather than loses it. In those circumstances, for the first time he would be able to make the fullest use of the technique that he learned at his medical school, and he would be able to prove that he is in the front line, and is really the pivot of the Service. Even if he lost some so-called freedom by doing this he would gain enormously in the power to provide help—and it would be worth his giving up some freedom if he could gain the power to assist his fellowmen. If, at the same time, he was able to live a longer life and then enjoy a year or two in retirement, I am sure that society would not begrudge it him.
I ask the Minister of Health and his colleagues on the Front Bench whether they have noted the editorial in the British Medical Journal this week, which referred to the food poisoning cases which have arisen from imported Chinese frozen eggs. It is a forthright editorial and I refer to it because we are obviously asked to answer a question which the editor puts, namely, why has no action been taken to protect the public? Last year, in the Minister's report to the nation, we were told that there had been 22 deaths from food poisoning, and that 20 of these were from salmonella infection. Chinese eggs have also been responsible for salmonella infection.
In short, the article asks why we have not forbidden the importation of this material, which, every year, has been responsible for outbreaks of food poisoning and which has so far caused


four outbreaks this year—one in Edinburgh, one in Yorkshire, one in Northamptonshire and one in Surrey. The Yorkshire one is going on at this moment, and we do not know how many more outbreaks we shall get. An instruction should be given that the Chinese must pasteurise this material. They are quite well able to do this, and if they were given time to do it I am sure that they would not object. I ask the Secretary of State for Scotland to say that this point will be considered, and that something will be done.

6.53 p.m.

Lord Balniel: The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) began his speech by saying, rightly, that Members had taken the opportunity to raise individual grievances. Although this is a quite appropriate procedure, it has slightly surprised me. I was rather surprised by the speech made by the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson)—to whom we always listen with respect, because he has great experience in health matters—because, instead of surveying the broad picture of the National Health Service he almost went out of his way to take a microscope in order to select one or two issues, which although important, are isolated and limited as compared with the broad spectrum of the Health Service.
This was the more surprising because this debate provides the first occasion in the history of the National Health Service when the whole jigsaw of the framework of the Service has been put together, with the publication of the twin major plans—the Hospital Plan and the plan produced by the health and welfare authorities. Instead of taking within their remit the whole jigsaw and interlocking pattern, however, the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North and other hon. Members isolated one or two items for attention.
I regard this as a missed opportunity on their part. This is the first time that the Committee has had the opportunity to cast its eyes forward—not in a figurative sense, or in the sense dreaming dreams and conjuring up visions, but in purely statistical terms—in order to see what will be the future pattern of our health services, be they hospital

services, health and welfare services, or the general practitioner service, to which the hon. Member referred. The doctors are the linchpin of the Health Service. It is an impressive fact, which we should not allow the debate to pass without referring to, that during the next ten years the expenditure on building work alone in the Health Service will amount to over £1,000 million.
The publication of these two Reports provides the House with a magnificent vantage point from which to observe the way in which the Health Service has developed, and to try to mould it as we want to see it moulded in the future. Everybody associated with the National Health Service, be he doctor or nurse, the pharmaceutical companies; local health authority or the Government—is entitled to take a great deal of credit for what has been achieved in the past ten years.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central talked about the life expectancy of general practitioners. We were worried to hear that it was very much shorter than that of politicians. We wish the hon. Member a long and happy life in the occupation that he has chosen in the latter part of his life. But it is not unreasonable for us to comment that during the past ten years life expectancy over the whole population has increased by three years—for men from 66 to 69 years and for women from 71 to 74 years. This is not a picture of a health service which is contracting it is one that is bringing material benefits to our people.
The hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton) and the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North referred to nurses' salaries. The proof of the pudding—the question whether nursing conditions are improving or deteriorating—is in the eating. During the last ten years the number of full-time nurses has not diminished; it has increased by 25 per cent. In the same period the number of part-time nurses has increased by 140 per cent.

Mr. W. Hamilton: If this argument is carried to its logical conclusion, the corollary would surely be that, if there were an enormous increase in supply, the Minister would take steps to reduce salaries, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Lord Balniel: I also come from the Kingdom of Fife, and in Scotland we are


taught to bring logic to our arguments. I am completely defeated by the logic of the hon. Gentleman's argument, but perhaps we could argue the point out quietly at some time in his constituency.
I do not want to refer too much to the past except to give one other figure. The publication of these two plans gives us the advantage of looking back to the past and on to the future. During the last ten years, the number of new beds in hospitals has increased by 40,000, which is the equivalent to the building of sixty substantial, new hospitals in this country. I believe that through the efforts of Governments of both parties since the war we have now developed a Health Service which is without parallel in quality in the world.
We now, I feel, should concentrate our attention not so much on recrimination about the past but as to how much the Health Service should develop in the future. I think that we on this side of the Committee are entitled to express a sense of pride that whereas when we came into office the total capital building programme of hospitals was £9 million, we are during the next ten years proposing to spend £550 million. I cannot understand how the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North can possibly describe this as being a contracting Health Service. I do not in any way say this with a sense of complacency. To me these plans that have been published are no more than a point of new departure because I fully realise that, even when all this work has been undertaken in ten years' time, more than half of the patients in mental hospitals will still be in old hospitals. To me these plans are a basis on which we can build, and also, I believe, a challenge to my right hon. Friend and to ourselves.
I want to say a word on the subject of psychiatric services. The total number of beds for the mentally sick range from 2·3 per 1,000 of the population in some parts of the country to 7·2 per 1,000 in other parts of the country. The aim of the hospital plan is to reduce this ratio so that throughout the country there will be 1·8 beds per 1,000 of the population for the mentally sick.
The figure of 1.8 per 1,000 has in fact been very vigorously challenged by the

P.E.P. pamphlet Psychiatric Services in 1975. Quite honestly, I do not think that the revision of the Hospital Plan which was published in April of this year entirely meets the argument which was advanced against this figure of 1·8 per 1,000. This revision of the Hospital Plan merely reiterates the statement that all the trends indicate that by 1975 there will be 1·8 beds per 1,000 of the population. I have no doubt myself that the trends will result in this ratio. But the argument advanced in the P.E.P. pamphlet is as follows:
The crucial question is not whether the proposed changes are possible in practice, but whether they are desirable in principle.
it goes on:
The quantitative forecast"—
that is, in the Hospital Plan—
is of the most rudimentary kind; it is a simple projection of recent trends and takes no account of the many clinical, social and administrative factors which have influenced these trends.
The statisticians have taken as their criterion "usage", and to me "usage" is no criterion at all as to the merits or demerits of the trends.
I am not pretending that I can judge the merits of these arguments. All I say is that the House of Commons, in a way, is a jury, and the argument which is advanced with considerable force by the P.E.P. pamphlet has not been answered in the revision of the Hospital Plan. I hope that before we embark on colossal national investment my right hon. Friend may see his way to undertaking some fairly fundamental research into whether this figure of 1·8 per 1,000 is something which we should aim at in our plans.
There is one other matter to which I wish to refer. It is the point raised by the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North when he referred to the Report of the Joint Sub-Committee on the Safety of Drugs. I find myself in a very considerable measure of agreement with him. I find this Report, which is issued by a joint sub-committee of the Standing Medical Advisory Committee, an equivocal document and one which, is to my mind, rather astonishing coming from this body. The first and more important of the terms of reference of the Committee were to advise the Minister of Health and


the Secretary of State for Scotland on what measures are needed
to secure adequate pharmacological and safety testing and clinical trials of new drugs before their release for general use.
It seems to me that with those terms of reference the Committee could have come to three conclusions. It could have decided that the status quo was all right, and that the responsibility should rest fair and square on the pharmaceutical companies and on the doctors when prescribing. It could have come to the conclusion that some kind of voluntary advisory body would be desirable, a body with which manufacturers and doctors might or might not co-operate—but a body which would command considerable local authority. Or it could have come to the conclusion that there should be a body with statutory powers, a body with legislative sanctions behind it.
So far as I understand this Report, the Committee recommends that there should be a body with legislative sanctions behind it. It says:
Our concern is with arrangements for ascertaining the effects of drugs and we make recommendations accordingly. These arrangements themselves would obviously be more effective with legislative sanction than without and we are satisfied that legislation on the whole subject is urgently required. No interim measures should be regarded as a justification for delaying this essential task.
It goes on to say that it recognises that legislation would take some time
Yet there is a specially urgent need to take whatever steps are immediately possible to improve the safety testing of drugs.
From that moment onwards, having said that a body with legislative sanction behind it is urgently necessary—and it produces no shred of evidence to show that it is—the Committee goes on to advise the setting up of a voluntary body. The logic of its own argument seems to me to fall entirely in favour of the minority Report signed by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead). I think that the failure to pursue the logic of its case is a serious failure on the part of the Advisory Committee. I personally, however, neither agree with my hon. Friend, nor with the Advisory Committee. I should like to see responsibility rest solely with the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors.
I think that the Committee's failure lies in its interpretation of the terms of reference. Paragraph 6 of the Report states:
We have interpreted, our remit as requiring us to advise on measures which … secondly, will re-assure the public that all possible steps are being taken to prevent the marketing of new drugs which have not been the subject of adequate safety testing and clinical trial …
I do not believe that that is the responsibility of a medical advisory committee. Its responsibility is to give medical advice. Reassurance to the public is a political responsibility which falls upon the Minister of Health. I wish to make quite clear that my criticisms are in no way directed. to the Minister of Health. My criticisms are that in considering this matter the Medical Advisory Committee's joint stab-committee has taken upon itself a political decision which I do not think lies within its responsibility.
Returning to the two plans, it is a matter of congratulation that now, at long last, we have the basis for the development of the health services. We have our hospital plans. We have the health and welfare services plan. We can see in terms of capital investment how the Health Service will develop over the next ten years. I should like to see my right hon. Friend, and indeed the Government in general, take one further step in the fairly close future. The health and welfare services of the local authorities deal primarily, or in many respects, with the care of elderly people. My impression is that, in spite of the dedicated work undertaken by many voluntary organisations and many local authority servants in health and welfare, there are problems involving the care of our elderly people which are falling between many of these services.
This is occurring with the health services, the meals on wheels, home helps and residential care for the elderly. They are also falling between various Ministries—the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, with its responsibility for the housing of the elderly, and the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance, with its responsibility for pensions and National Assistance. The time has come when we should look again at the care of the elderly and place overall responsibility for supervising the work of voluntary organisations and local authority health and welfare services, the


housing of the elderly, and pensions and National Assistance on the shoulders of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health.

7.14 p.m.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: I share the disquiet which the noble Lord the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) has expressed concerning the recommendations of the Cohen Report. No doubt the Minister of Health will take legal advice on the question which the noble Lord raised with the Minister—whether or not if a manufacturing firm produced a drug which passed the Committee's tests, but thereafter proved deleterious and caused damage, the firm when sued for damages could rely on the fact that the drug had passed the Committee's tests as negativing responsibility on the firm's part for negligence.
I shall not follow the noble Lord in his approach to this subject, valuable though his contribution proved, because it seems to me that his approach was characteristic of that generally adopted today—that is, looking at the Health Service from the top. This is perhaps an inevitable approach for a Minister. A Minister's view is very much like a bird's-eye view. It is naturally from the top. Perhaps we tend to forget that the Health Service is concerned primarily with the man at the bottom, the patient.
My approach is to detain the Committee with certain views which I have formed from the patient's point of view. It is only from the patient's point of view that I have any authority to speak, since I have no other experience which justifies my venturing into this field. It seems to me that the patient may be the least considered functionary in the organisation although he is the man who is there to use the service. There is a great danger in a purely statistical approach. Great tribute has been paid to the Health Service and its benefits to our people, and this, of all services, is the one where we can least afford to have a purely statistical approach.
The hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. LI. Williams) referred to a Question which had been asked of the Minister concerning Denbigh mental hospital, namely, whether margarine had replaced butter there as part of the meals. The

Minister had answered that margarine had replaced butter as part of the diet. From the Ministerial, statistical point of view, this provision of margarine was an economy in diet, but from the patients' point of view this was part of his food. The patients are in hospital and they have to eat it, and it is a question of whether their stay in hospital is more or less happy according to what they eat. This shows the difference in approach between the top and the bottom.
Again, looking at this subject from the patient's point of view, I believe that the average patient identifies the Health Service with the general practitioner. I am glad that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) raised the question of the position of the general practitioner. When a man is ill he goes to see his doctor, who very often knows a good deal about the man's family and background. If the man needs further treatment, or needs any of the welfare services, it is generally the doctor who suggests it. If he has to have hospital treatment or consultative treatment at a later stage it is the doctor who arranges it. It seems to me, therefore, that only the general practitioner is in a position to co-ordinate and connect what otherwise would be entirely divorced individual items of attention. He, therefore, is the keystone of the whole structure.
There is cause for great anxiety today about the position of the general practitioner in the National Health Service. Undoubtedly many pressures are acting upon him. Let hon. Members consider for a moment the isolation of the general practitioner. He tends to be isolated from hospitals, and this is increasing. and isolated from his fellow doctors. As has been pointed out already, there is little incentive for him to improve his premises and he often works in rather sordid conditions. There is little incentive for him to improve his knowledge by post-graduate work or investigations of 'that nature. He has few facilities, few amenities and little ancillary help. He has little secretarial help, and no welfare service is under his control or direction.
Our Health Service has not been going many years, but there is no doubt that these pressures are giving rise to a state of affairs which will mean that


eventually recruitment into the Service will be affected. Eminent medical gentlemen who are involved in the recruitment of medical students into medical schools in London have expressed great concern to me not about the intellectual or academic attainments of applicants but about their suitability in character and personality for medical work.
It is important to remember that the general practice of all branches of medicine needs men interested in healing; that is, men interested in medicine. There is a great danger of our making the general practitioner an overworked rubber stamp, dividing the people who need aspirins from those who need hospital treatment. It will be a sad day if we turn him into that. We should consider just what the rôle of the general practitioner should be in the Health Service today. What function should he perform? I suggest that he should be, and should be regarded as, the leader of a welfare team—the best qualified and the man with expert knowledge who is able to coordinate and lead a team of welfare workers
The present set-up tends to act against this idea. Consider, for example, the maternity services. An expectant mother today will go to a local health clinic run by the local authority, will attend her general practitioner. If anything is abnormal about the pregnancy she will go to a consultant and, after all this, the child might be delivered by a midwife in the mother's home.
The woman may be visited by a health visitor. Yet none of these people may have had real contact with each other. They are all giving advice, often conflicting advice, in complete isolation and I regard this as a reprehensible state of affairs. There is a crying need for coordination of the various services affecting the patient in his or her home. I would go as far as saying that all the services having anything to do with patients in their homes should be integrated.
There is a danger—and I have come across examples of this several times—for one person, perhaps a health visitor, genuinely to give advice, although that advice is in complete conflict with advice that the patient has already received from the general practitioner. It often happens

that one of the advisers is not in contact with, and is not aware of, the advice given by the other.
As well as being critical I wish to make some suggestions and I hope that the Minister will find them constructive and of assistance to him in improving the services about which I have spoken. I believe that it is highly desirable, in uncomplicated births, that the practice of the mother having the child at home should continue. However, local emergency services should be readily available under the leadership of the general practitioner. We need what might be called "delivery centres" in some areas, particularly the more remote ones. I appreciate that the number of beds for maternity cases will be increased in. the general district hospitals, but they might be needed for the more complicated births.
We need delivery centres for cases where it might not be suitable or practicable for the mother to have her child at home, but where there is no complication about the birth. Some local hospitals have been threatened with closure and many of these could, I believe, be used for this purpose. The general practitioner, midwives and district nurses would have their respective co-ordinated parts to play in these delivery centres.
I welcome the ten-year Hospital Plan in general, although too much concern or preoccupation seems to have been placed on the closure of local hospitals. It could be that we are suffering from too urban au approach to this problem, and some of us who represent rural constituencies take a different view from that of the Government. I believe that the general practitioner must be brought mare closely in touch with the hospitals. There is considerable scope for more part-time clinical assistantships and there should be more general practitioner beds in hospitals.
The district hospital is the only answer when the whole range of specialist services must be provided. However, in my district of Llanidloes, in Montgomery, we have a small cottage hospital, staffed by general practitioners, which has, so far, provided all the services needed for the district, save for the complicated cases which have been sent elsewhere. It is now proposed to


close this hospital and to move patients to the general hospital at Aberystwyth, 30 miles away.
During January and February of this year the road between the two places was completely closed. There is no railway and no public transport could get through. A few private motorists managed to complete the journey, although many were involved in collisions. This example illustrates the difficulties of the rural areas. It also shows that there is scope for preserving hospitals of this type to deal with the non-complicated medical cases and as maternity delivery centres and for geriatrics. The general practitioner could thereby be brought more closely into hospital work and he would have a closer liaison with the specialist services. There has been far too much of an urban approach by the Ministry of Health to the problems of the medical services in the rural areas.
Hon. Members must be concerned with the recruitment of doctors, especially into general practice. I am sure that the Minister will agree that the 10 per cent. Willink cut was disastrous because many areas of the country are still grossly under-doctored. It is, therefore, necessary both to restore that cut and to go above it. It is equally important not only to expand the medical schools, but to develop new ones, either in or near the areas which are under-doctored, especially in the new universities.
The Minister, who seems to be fond of statistics, is probably aware that doctors tend to settle in or near the areas where they have been to university. This, apparently, is recognised by the profession and is one of the reasons for the under-doctoring of the parts of the country where medical schools are not available.

Mr. Powell: I will give the hon. and learned Member another statistic. The intake into medical schools last autumn was 16 per cent. above the figure recommended by Willink.

Mr. Hooson: I am pleased to hear that, although I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will bear in mind the anxiety that has been expressed about the quality of some of the entrants. I am not speaking of their academic

attainments, but their personality, their aptitude for the job, and so on.
The Minister might also consider making financial provision for refresher courses to be given to married women who have been out of medical practice for a considerable time so that they can return to the service. He might also investigate the school medical service to see whether or not a great deal of overlapping occurs. Perhaps because of the National Health Service, the school medical service is not now necessary to fulfil the task that was originally intended for it and is more of a statistics-obtaining service than a preventive medicine one.
Another matter which greatly affects general practitioners is the problem of equipment. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central was right when he pointed to the division of the remuneration of general practitioners between that portion representing recoupment for expenses and equipment, and so on, and that portion regarded as net income as a disincentive. The Ministry's interest-free scheme for doctors in group practice to provide their own modernised surgeries has been very helpful.
I know of one practice where three young doctors, who are particularly and wholeheartedly interested in medicine, set up their own surgery at a cost of about £10,000. They decided that as they would be spending the rest of their lives in that practice, they wanted to work under the best possible conditions. They employ their own receptionist and they have their own dispenser and dispensary. I am glad to say that a local authority health visitor has been allocated to them. By and large, however, there is no incentive for doctors to do this sort of thing. The number of practices where this has been done is a small proportion of those where it could be done. because there is no financial or other incentive for doctors to do it. I should like the Minister to look at that matter.
This experiment of attaching local authority health visitors to particular practices is one to be greatly encouraged and extended. As a result of the information which is obtainable, I hope that it may be possible to consider basing midwives, district nurses, health visitors and other welfare workers on individual or group practices so that there is a


co-ordinated medical scheme, with a doctor acting as the leader. The lack of such arrangements constitutes one of the great gaps in the service. There should not be this tripartite division between the general practitioner, the local authority and the hospital. Somehow, this problem must be solved.
There is much to be said for health centres in some areas, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central. But I hope that the Minister will not consider it possible to provide a uniform solution. In many areas health centres would be a great help. But in other areas a group practice would seem to be the answer. In rural areas where the population is dispersed, the individual practitioner provides not only the best, but the only possible answer. I should, therefore, like the Minister to avoid the uniform approach which has characterised one or two of the speeches from hon. Members on this side of the Committee.
I have adverted to the fact that the administration of the National Health Service is difficult because of the tripartite administrative division between the general practitioner, the local authority and the hospital. It is a difficult matter to overcome and we are bound to get areas where health and welfare services merge, as it were, with purely medical services. I am greatly in favour of the idea of area health boards to co-ordinate services as was suggested in the Porritt Report. I should prefer the boards to follow the present local authority division rather than have new divisions, cutting across the local authority divisions, set up as areas for these boards.
I should particularly like the Minister to give his attention to a matter which affects only a minority of people, but which causes great distress. I refer not to the old chronic sick, but to the young chronic sick. I have particularly in mind cases of sclerosis which have been brought to my attention. In one case the wife has disseminated sclerosis and apparently no help has been possible under the National Health Service. There are relatively few of these cases and it has been suggested that they should go into wards with older people who are chronically sick, but surely something can be done to help specially these young people.
I know of a case where a wife, aged 40, is in one of the Cheshire homes, at a great financial expense to the husband, who cannot really afford it. He has had to sell his home. His son lives with him in a flat, but his daughter is being cared for by the family. There have been communications with the Department about this case, lot t apparently nothing can be done under the National Health Service to give this unfortunate lady the kind of assistance which she needs.
I have spoken for longer than I intended, but I wish to mention two other matters and one is the question of the prison medical service. I suggest that it is time that the prison medical services were brought under the control of the Ministry of Health. That would be a good thing for the staff and for the prisoners. Integration would ensure cooperation with other medical authorities. It would be far healthier and better if the medical services in the prisons came directly under the Ministry of Health.

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. C. Royle): Order. I am not certain whether the hon. and learned Member is right to deal with this matter. Perhaps the Minister can assist me. I think that the prison services come under the Home Office and not the Ministry of Health.

Mr. Powell: With respect, Mr. Royle, I do not think that there is a prison Vote under discussion.

The Temporary Chairman: That is exactly what I thought. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will move to his next point.

Mr. Hooson: I am grateful for your Ruling, Mr. Royle. I simply indicated the matter for the Minister's consideration.
When we have a ten-year policy for the development of hospitals it is essential, in my view, that there should also be a policy for the staff, during the same period. It is a great mistake to think that any medical service depends essentially on bricks arid mortar. It does not. It depends on the quality of the people in the service and the training they receive. One would like to see a staff development plan thought out carefully to cover this period.
I am sure that privately, if not even in his Ministerial capacity, the Minister


would agree that many people on hospital staffs are still grossly underpaid. Take, for example, radiographers who are rarely vocal about this matter. I came across a case at an important hospital where the head radiographer was paid less than the head porter. There is a great need to ensure the development of a plan, complementary to the hospital plan, for staffing hospitals adequately. Surely the foundation for a proper national incomes policy would be a fair and just reward for those in the public service.

7.39 p.m.

Mr. John Eden: Many hon. Members opposite have used rather exaggerated phrases during this debate. They have abused my right hon. Friend. Yet the criticisms which they have sought to bring to the attention of the Committee have proved to be transparently weak. I appreciate the dilemma in which many hon. Members opposite must find themselves. They wish to glorify the Service of which, with scant justice, they claim sole authorship, without hinting in any way that its continued expansion has anything to do with the Government of the past twelve years.
The fact remains that the plans we have before us indicate not only great hopes for the future but prove the soundness of the management in the immediate past. My noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) rightly drew attention to the fact that for the first time we are given a clear, forward look at the future programme of the Health Service as a whole.
Here, for the first time, the pattern for the future is set before us for the consideration of the country. The hospital and the health and welfare plans provide a comprehensive and masterly survey of future trends and needs of the Service. For this, my right hon. Friend must earn a great deal of credit from both sides of the Committee. Yet many hon. Members opposite have criticised him for what they call his statistical approach.
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), in an extremely interesting speech, did exactly the same thing, as though this were something to be condemned. Hon. Members bring this criticism forward with a slanting reference to what they would have the country believe to be the lack

of humanity of my right hon. Friend. How wrong they are. As in so many other things, they are totally wrong in this. Are they going to base all their plans for future expansion on emotion? We have to have a statistical approach. Statistics are necessary on which to base plans for future development.

Mr. Hooson: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want to misquote me. I said that there was danger in a purely statistical approach.

Mr. Eden: Statistics are pure, otherwise they are of little value. We must have statistics on which to plan for future developments. One can have no other secure or sound basis for planning for the future. I agree that later, when the plans take shape, humanity has to be breathed into them to give them life and warmth and spirit. But before we get to that stage we must have the facts and figures, as near as can be deduced or conjectured, on which to base the plans, costs and estimates for the future.
This Committee, dealing as we are with a very sizeable portion of the national expenditure, may be grateful for the fact that our country's economy is in the hands of sound management today. At the very least, the statistics give a very good indication of the extent of the requirements likely to be placed on the National Health Service in future.
As a Bournemouth Member, I am particularly glad of the fact that the first revision of the Hospital Plan indicates that Bournemouth will have before long a new hospital for the area. My right hon. Friend has visited the Royal Victoria Hospital and I know that a former Parliamentary Secretary and many senior members of the Department have taken a great interest in the needs of the area for hospital provision.
I want to take this first opportunity I have of welcoming this new projected development, which is very necessary, for, as my right hon. Friend will know, the older the building the greater the current running cost. This is not the only reason why, in the first revision, Bournemouth is to have a new hospital, but it is a very important reason when we are considering these Estimates.
I am glad also that Bournemouth features so prominently in the Blue


Book on health and welfare. I want to give an illustration of the work done in Bournemouth in part of the field covered by the Blue Book. But, first, we must understand the proper background on the national level to see what it is that the nation as a whole is seeking to do. In the chapter dealing with the care of elderly people, it is clearly indicated that the proportion of old people in the population will steadily increase over the next twenty years. Of those aged 65 and over, there is likely to be in twenty years' time an increase of nearly 2 million, which is 32·5 per cent. One interesting sidelight on this development is the fact that in the second of the two decades to come there will be a greater proportionate increase of those over 75 compared with those between 65 and 75.
In 1961, persons aged 65 and over comprised about 12 per cent. of the total population. It is conjectured that this percentage will grow to about 14 per cent. by the end of the two decades, even allowing, obviously, for the increase of population as a whole. But the Report says that there are very wide margins in different county boroughs. Paragraph 46 mentions that in 1961 the margin varied between 8 per cent. and 22 per cent. in different county boroughs.
In Bournemouth, the proportion is very high and I make no apology for telling the Committee something of how the local authority tackles its responsibilities. This is not regarded by anyone in Bournemouth as a burden or a problem but as a first obligation which they are happy to do their best to meet. Compared with the national figure of 12 per cent. of the total population aged 65 and over, in Bournemouth in 1962 the proportion was 22 per cent.
To put this in perspective I quote figures from other places. In Cardiff the figure was 10·6 per cent.; in Chester, 11·5 per cent.; Oxford, 13·6 per cent.; Bath, 15·7 per cent., and in Brighton, 17·5 per cent. In Bournemouth, by 1972—which is the end of the first decade of the two which are generally being considered now—it is expected that the proportion will increase from 22 per cent. to about 24 per cent.
I am sure that hon. Members can well understand the very big impact that these figures have on the housing programmes

and on plans for home help and the provision of residential accommodation. It is a very big task for a county borough to meet these commitments honourably and adequately in the context of the figures such as I have presented today. I want to give some idea of how this is being tackled.
On the housing front, in the provision of single bedroomed flatlets, bed-sitting rooms and bungalows for the old, about 623—

The Temporary Chairman: Order. We are discussing the Estimates with regard to the Ministry of Health, not the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.

Mr. Eden: With respect, Mr. Royle, these matters come under the welfare services. These are most important aspects. I thought that it would be relevant at least to discuss some aspects of the health and welfare plans as mentioned in Cmnd. 1973.

The Temporary Chairman: When the bon. Gentleman proceeds to give figures of housing in a particular town, I would not regard that as coming under what we are discussing.

Mr. Eden: I am not deliberately arguing with the Chair, for that is the last thing I should wish, Mr. Royle, but in the chapter in the Blue Book dealing with the elderly there is an important part about housing for the elderly, and that is primarily promoted by the Welfare Services Department. I think that this is a terribly important aspect of the work being done to try to help the health of elderly people.

The Temporary Chairman: It may be very important, but it is not in the Votes we are discussing.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: Further to that point of order, Mr. Royle. Surely the Minister himself referred to this Blue Book. Although I admit that perhaps details may not be desirable at this stage, surely the argument of the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) is valid, since the Minister himself has already brought it into our discussion.

The Temporary Chairman: It does not follow that because of a change in


the occupancy of the Chair I shall not decide what is in order and what is not.

Mr. Eden: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) for coming to my rescue. This is a dilemma we frequently face. It is the sort of point my noble Friend the Member for Hertford complained about. It is impossible to discuss comprehensively the needs of elderly people without trespassing across a number of Votes and a number of Departments. It is approaching the point of lunacy, with respect, Mr. Royle, if I cannot at least refer in passing to the sort of provision which is being made in Bournemouth.

The Temporary Chairman: I have no objection to the hon. Gentleman referring to anything in passing, but I must ask him to stick to the Votes in his general speech.

Mr. Eden: I am grateful, Mr. Royle. I will refer only briefly in passing to this subject because the picture is incomplete without it.
Altogether, 13 per cent, of the Corporation of Bournemouth's house-building programme is devoted to the needs of elderly people. This is an important aspect of the work done on the preventive side, and therefore it bears very materially on the cost of the National Health Service as a whole, for unless there is adequate provision for elderly people, designed to meet their particular needs, they will become a liability on the National Health Service Vote.
There is other work on the preventive side which is being done very actively indeed. This includes home nursing, home help, home visiting and all the miscellaneous services. But I want to draw particular attention to the work being done by the W.V.S. with the meals-on-wheels service, for this is an outstanding service which was of particular value during the cold spell and was tremendously appreciated. In Bournemouth also we have a plan—

Mr. Denis Howell: Tell us about Boscombe.

Mr. Eden: This also embraces Boscombe.
In Bournemouth we also have a plan, under the general ten-year plan, for day centres for old people. This is a new

development. It is the provision of a hail, with anterooms, kitchen, baths, and other facilities, which becomes, in effect, a sort of club for the elderly people to which they can go by day and which again is designed to bring to them the general companionship of the community, which is so essential. Unfortunately, the day centre which it was proposed to begin this year has had to be postponed because of the likely heavy impact on the rates. A new mental health home has recently been opened for the area. There is another under construction. Four are planned over the next decade.
All these matters, to which I have referred in passing, are relieving the hospitals, quite rightly, of a considerable pressure which would otherwise have come their way. Whilst it does this, it also considerably adds to the total rate burden in the borough. Already all the services administered by the corporation cost about 11s. 7d. in the £, of which about ls. is spent on health and welfare. Schemes of this kind have a great impact on an area such as that which I represent, where a special and peculiar need is placed on us because of the large numbers of elderly people who, quite properly, come to spend their declining years in Bournemouth. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will have a word with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government with a view to seeing if something can be done by means of the general grant to assist us over this difficult period.
The fact remains, however, that since much of this work is being financed through rate contribution as well as under the Votes we are now considering, local administration can take full account of local needs. This is what we are doing. There are plans to double the expenditure on health and welfare in Bournemouth in the next ten years, which will go some way towards meeting the increased pressure which will arise from the demands in the area.
As a number of hon. Members opposite have sought to show that under Conservative management the health services have been neglected, although the complete opposite is the truth, I am forced to rub this fact home: the active work being done in my constituency and the great programme planned for the


future development of the services there are being carried out under a Conservative council and have largely been inspired by a Conservative Minister of Health.
My noble friend the Member for Hertford referred to the need for closer co-ordination of the services, particularly in so far as they are designed to meet the needs of elderly people. Again, Bournemouth is well blessed in this respect. We have an extremely imaginative and able chief officer of welfare services. He works in the closest possible co-operation with the chief medical officer of health and the housing manager. I think I am justified in claiming that at that level there is the closest permissible cooperation. I stress the word "permissible", because I think that the higher up the scale one gets the less interdepartmental co-operation one gets.
Therefore, I support my noble Friend in making this plea. At Ministerial level there should be a greater effort to try to cut out the obstacles to securing the greatest degree of co-operation between departments in caring for elderly people. This has been begun already, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister has sent out a circular on this subject. In an area such as mine, where the need is acute and where the requirements are very great indeed, it could not possibly be tackled or met without having the closest possible practical and active cooperation at local level, and I should like to see this reflected more actively higher up the scale.
I come to the most important thought of all. When we are considering Estimates in this Committee we generally tend to call for further increases in expenditure. It is right to remember that we should consider how we are to finance some of these programmes which we have outlined before us. Any hon. Member who has looked at the summary of the Vote under Class VI will realise the tremendous size and scope of this problem. The sum of £2,826 million is the gross total involved in Class VI. We cannot lightly pass this by without any consideration of its implications, not only for us but for generations to come.
In the Health Service there is a partnership between the State, the local authority and the individual. The proportions within this partnership have got

slightly out of scale. The State tends to provide a greater part in proportion than it should be required to do in days of increasing affluence and prosperity. I do not hesitate strongly to disagree with the many views put forward by hon. Members opposite who protest against anybody contributing anything towards the cost of the services they get. I yield to no hon. Member in my desire that those who are in need should get as much assistance as we can give them, but I do not agree that in days of increasing prosperity, when the annual wage packet is steadily growing, no account should be taken of the possibility that the individual citizen can himself contribute to a greater degree than he has been doing, and is now doing, towards the cost of the services which he uses and from which he benefits. It is important that we give consideration to this aspect, which concerns not only the Health Service, but, also inevitably, other services and which may lead us on to a complete reshaping of our social services generally. In looking forward over the neat twenty years I think that it would be quite wrong if we were simply to examine the future in terms of bricks or mortar, or even in terms of expanding the services, without also closely examining the methods by which we are proposing to finance them.

Mr. Loughlin: Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, can I ask him to let the Committee know—

The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Robert Grimston): Order. The hon. Gentleman is putting a question before the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) sits down. The hon. Member got in in time, but I hope that he will be quick, in the interest of other hon. Members.

Mr. Loughlin: I am at a loss to understand what this is all about, Sir Robert. If I am in order, why am I pulled up? May I now ask the hon. Gentleman to let the Committee know precisely what charges he thinks that the patient under the Health Service should bear? What are the charges to which he refers when he says that people ought to be prepared to bear some of the charges?

8.5 p.m.

Mr. John Baird: I have listened to most of


this debate. Hon. Members on both sides have made some very valuable points—points about local problems and points of administration, but apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee), I do not think that anyone has dealt with the fundamentals of the scheme as we have it today and as we introduced it in 1948.
I have been in the House of Commons for eighteen years, but I do not think I have ever heard an hon. Member take so long to say so little as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) has just done. He paid a great compliment to the Minister. He talked about our expanding Health Service. Anyone who knows anything about it knows that it is not expanding but is contracting. The hon. Gentleman said that we now have a new ten-year plan. But it is only on paper, issued just before another General Election. This is 1963. Why was not this plan introduced in 1953 if the Conservatives really believe in it?
The Minister smothered us with statistics. The hon. Gentleman defended him. It has been said that figures can be made to prove anything. Those of us who are associated with the National Health Service know that it is nothing like the service it was in 1948. I am glad that I caught your eye, Sir Robert, because I think that I am the only dental surgeon in the House and I want to deal with dental matters. I here declare my interest. I am glad I caught your eye, for the further reason that I was one of those who assisted at the birth of the National Health Service. I sat all through the Committee stage of the 1948 Bill and helped to formulate it. At that time it was a free health service—at least, free at time of need. The Labour Party was very proud of that service, which was perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the Labour Government's term of office.
I want to speak about one or two dental aspects. There is a controversial point, but it is not a political one. We have recently taken a great step forward in the care of children's teeth by the introduction of fluoride into our water supplies. Caries in children's teeth has been rampant. The position today is better than it was, but it is still very serious. By the introduction of fluoride I believe that we can revolutionise the

treatment of children's teeth. I advocated this measure in Parliament fifteen or sixteen years ago. I do not want any hon. Member to think that when I talk about adding fluorides I am seeking to justify fluoride in toothpaste. That can have no therapeutic value, and is simply a sales gimmick.
I cannot understand why some of my hon. Friends are opposed to the use of fluoride. They probably do not realise its medical implications and the medical advance it represents. Every responsible medical authority has welcomed it. I hope that local authorities will use it as soon as possible and will not be put aside by cranks, some of whom are among my friends.
The present Leader of the House built up his reputation by a vicious attack on my friend, the late Aneurin Bevan. He said that the school dental service had failed and that the Tory Party would put it right. There has not been much improvement in the service since 1948–49, but there has been an improvement in children's teeth. A large number of children now go to the family dentist for treatment. I should say that one-third of my patients are school children, yet I must admit that it would be much better if they could get the treatment within the school service.
Although I am a general dental practitioner, I also attend to the teeth of the children at a fairly large private school. When those children come, as they do, in groups of six or eight, they have much more courage—and they are away from their mothers. When they come with their mothers, they are apt to show off, and become a little temperamental. It would be much better if, at certain ages, they could be treated at a clinic rather than come to the family dentist. The trouble is that the school dental services are under the local authorities, and some local authorities are progressive, and others are not.
Why does not the Minister see whether the school dental service could be brought under the Ministry of Health? We should then get a standard basis instead of having one authority pushing ahead with its dental services and another neglecting them. The education authority would still provide the clinics,


but the Ministry would provide the dentists and see to the development of the school service—

Mr. A. E. Cooper (: I am a member of the Select Committee on Estimates, and the recommendation the hon. Member now makes to my right hon. Friend is one of the recommendations made by the Select Committee in its Report to the House.

Mr. Baird: The hon. Gentleman is quite right in saying that the Select Committee has made that recommendation, but I made it ten years ago. I have been making it ever since, and I shall go on making it until it is adopted.
There is the question of salaries. We hear a Tot about Tory planning working. In June last year, the Ministry cut dental incomes by between 15 per cent. and 20 per cent. gross. The Minister will perhaps not accept that figure, but I worked it out in my own practice. That was in June, 1962, but in April, 1963, the Ministry tells us that it will give us an increase of 12 per cent. from 1st April—though we have not got it yet.
I admit that in 1948–50, and on to 1952, dental incomes were far too high, but the Committee should now recognise that dentists are the only profession or group of workers that has had no increase, but a reduction, in income since 1948. Dentists may have been making big money in the early days, but it is not so today.
The Minister should also bear in mind that the scale of fees is completely unbalanced. I am in favour of a fully-salaried service, but we have payment by scale of fees, and I say that it is unbalanced. In 1948, we deliberately reduced the price of dentures and pushed up the price for conservative dental treatment because, at that time, a large number of dentists were practising what we called "blood-and-vulcanite" dentistry—extracting teeth and supplying vulcanite dentures. It was to stop that practice that we acted as we did. That has remained, yet labour charges today are almost doubled.
There is no incentive to give good, high-quality work in the National Health Service now. I apologise for being technical for a moment, but if a dentist fits a synthetic crown on to the root of a tooth his fee is £2 17s. 6d. My

mechanics charge me £1 15s. I sometimes have three visits to do my side of the work, and they can do theirs in an hour. The scale of fees for bridge work is completely unbalanced. It can no longer be done under the Health Service and, of course, far too much bureaucracy is growing up.
The cost of administration is growing, as the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Cooper) must know. I have been told by people whom I respect that members of the Select Committee of this House went to the Dental Estimates Board at Eastbourne, the administrative centre of the dental service. They arrived in the morning, and were given sherry by the chairman—an old gentleman of well over 70. The mayor of the town, who was on the stag of the Dental Estimates Board—and, I think, was still being paid while he was mayor, though I am not quite sure—then rushed them off for lunch, and they got the next train back to London. They never spoke to a single dental mem3er of the Board's staff.
How can the Select Committee possibly get at the facts if its members just see the officials who are running the show? I may be wrong—

Mr. Cooper: I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I did not go to Eastbourne with the other members of the Select Committee, but the object of that visit was not to get the detailed information that we normally get when members of the profession appear before us. Those members of the Select Committee visited the Dental Estimates Board to see exactly what went on there. Throughout the Session, we on the Select Committee interviewed very many members of the staff from Eastbourne, and I really believe that the Report submitted to the House was a very detailed, factual and accurate account of the conditions obtaining in the Health Service today.

Mr. Baird: All I can say is that between twenty and thirty dental members are employed on salary at the Board and, to the best of my knowledge, not one of them has been interviewed. I asked certain members of the Select Committee that some of these people should be allowed to give evidence, even in London, but I do not think that anyone was invited. Administrative members of the staff may have been interviewed, but none


of the dental members, who are the key to the whole service.
I do not want to take up too much time on dental matters, but will deal with the real fundamental problems of the medical service. Many of us are very worried by the drastic changes that have taken place in the Service under a Tory Government. Amenity beds are diminishing and private beds are increasing. This is all done in favour of the fee-paying patient, and the ordinary patient has to suffer as a result. The same kind of thing goes on with consultants.
There has been an attack on the principles of the National Health Service. The Minister and his predecessors have encouraged part-time consultants paid on a sessional basis, and have destroyed the whole-time consultant service. It is true that in 1948 we allowed a certain number of part-time consultants, but we were also building up a fine team of full-time consultants. Our ultimate aim was to do away with the part-time consultant, and to make this a full-time service. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock has said, we had to compromise at that time. To be quite frank, we were afraid of a black market in nursing homes, and in order to get the consultants in we had to offer some of them part-time service.
I am not by any means attacking our consultants. Let no one think that I blame them. I have had too much illness recently, and have been in hospital too much. to do other than pay a sincere compliment to the consultants. It is the Ministry and the Government that are encouraging this part-time service; they are to blame—not the consultants. We are going back to the bad old days of a two-class system of medicine—one for the wealthy and another for the ordinary folk. If hon. Members opposite call that an expanding service, I do not. It is expanding in some ways, but not to the satisfaction of the ordinary people.
Never have I heard so much humbug as in our Health Service debates over the years. Listening to lion. Members opposite one would think that it was their Health Service nowadays. but I have been in the House long enough to remember that the Health Service Bill was opposed at every stage by the Tories—even its Third Reading. Now they talk

about an expanding service—on paper. It is humbug. Let us cut out this kind of cant. We shall be back in power soon now, and one of our first objectives must be to rebuild the free National Health Service that has been destroyed by the party opposite.

8.25 p.m.

Sir Hugh Linstead: With only one short part of the speech of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) have I any sympathy. This was his reference to the fluoridation of water. I was very glad that he took the opportunity to draw attention, with his specialised knowledge, to the fact that this process is one of the safest and most effective courses open to the local authorities for checking the development of dental caries. Like him, I am amazed that, in this year of grace, there are still members of the public who find that the widespread experience of the advantages of fluoridation, gained all over the world, is not conclusive as to its value.
I shall confine myself to one section of the large field open to us for discussion, although, had there been more time, I should have preferred to touch on several other points as well. I wish to draw particular attention to the Report of the Committee on the Safety of Drugs, to which several references have been made, and to explain why and one of my colleagues on the Committee responsible for the Report found it necessary to dissent from the majority view. I have to tell my right hon. Friend that, with considerable regret, I shall not find it possible tonight to support him in the Lobby.
The genesis of that Committee has been dealt with during the debate. My noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) has explained in some detail what the objectives put before the Committee were. The Committee was invited to propose methods of testing new drugs for toxicity, for approving clinical trials before a drug was released for general use, for devising an early warning system which would enable unexpected results from new drugs to be noticed and, finally, to suggest a scheme for notifying the medical profession of the adverse effects of new drugs.
One of the lessons which the thalidomide tragedies brought home is that it is


doubtful today whether there is any such thing as a safe drug, and that we have been all too ready to assume that drugs can be carried about and can be taken as and when our momentary condition seems to require tranquillising, invigorating, or whatever it may be.
The thalidomide tragedies brought home to us also that the effects of a new drug on whole populations very often cannot be discovered until the drug has been given to a whole population. Only then are the idiosyncrasies or unexpected results thrown up. Whatever scheme of control and protection is devised, we can be certain that, from time to time, nature will get the better of us and there will in future be, as there has been in the past, "thalidomide tragedies" which no scientific foresight or system of control can avoid.
From those lessons one or two general principles emerge. In the handling and marketing of drugs ordinary commercial rules cannot be allowed to apply. We cannot just say, "caveat emptor"—let the purchaser read the advertisement, buy the drug, try it and see what happens. Also, even the physician, with his highly-specialised knowledge today, cannot be expected to keep up with the immense advances of medical science and with the unexpected results which the distribution of new drugs may produce in a community.
It is quite clear that we need today safeguards against crude toxicity—these, I think, are fairly good—and safeguards to ensure that drugs are effective for the purposes for which claims are made, and I doubt that these safeguards are effective at the moment. We also need the safeguard of a warning system against unexpected side-effects.
The difference between the view of my colleague Mr. Grosse and myself and that of the other members of the Committee resides din our belief that two of those three safeguards can be secured effectively only if there are statutory sanctions behind them. I received only yesterday morning from the president of a pharmaceutical manufacturing company in America who had read our Note of Dissent a letter from which the following is an extract:
As I understand it you are taking the position that the control of animal and human testing of new drugs (as well as old drugs

for new uses) should he under some Government agency responsible to the Health Ministers rather than be controlled on some voluntary system. Our experience in various States as well as the Federal Government here would tend to support your argument; the more ethical manufacturers of drugs will police their own efforts very well, but the smaller and less reliable groups may not be trusted too much".
He sums it up by saying:
It is this 5 per cent. of the industry that causes us 95 per cent. of the difficulties in the enforcement of any drug control action.
That, coming from the United States, with all its traditions of free enterprise, is, I suggest, a warning worthy to be borne in mind.
The majority Report of the Committee proposes that the voluntary committee be divided into three sub-committees, one to deal with toxicity, one to deal with clinical trials, and one to supervise the early warning system. My right hon. Friend has now named chairmen of the mair. committee and of the three sub-committees. No one could quarrel with or criticise in any way the choice. I am sure that their names will give great confidence, but it is just because the membership of the committees will give confidence that a certain danger exists. A sense of security will be created in the public mind beyond what it is possible for any voluntary committee or scheme to ensure. I fear that we shall have the appearance of security without reality and that there will be a real likelihood of the postponement of needed legislation because of this sense of security.
I do not want to go through the details of the scheme, because they are clearly set out in the Report, but I want to refer to some of the deficiencies. I have already said that the leading firms can be completely relied on. I think that we have in this country some of the finest pharmaceutical manufacturers in the world, whose reputation is the greatest safeguard that the public could possibly have. I am much more concerned about the smaller firms, and about the agents for small foreign firms, and about those who may say, "If I can import a new drug which has been tested in a foreign country and, relying on those tests, can get a lead of six months or a year over my British competitors, I am prepared to take the risk". That is not unlikely to happen.
It surely cannot be overlooked that there is no other country known to me of a scientific and industrial development comparable with our own which has not found it necessary to have some statutory control over new drugs. One of the most important principles to be applied in any control of new drugs is that the new drug should be regarded as guilty until it has proved itself innocent. At present, we work on the basis that all new drugs are innocent until there has been a series of poisonings, whereupon they can be scheduled and controlled. I do not think that we can afford to do that in future.
Under a voluntary scheme, it will not be possible to restrict new drugs to medical prescription until such time as they prove themselves to be safe and, therefore, available for general distribution. If the job is to be done properly, we must establish the principle that every drug shall be labelled with its own scientific name in addition to the trade mark of the manufacturer. I think that we must have labelling requirements which give the necessary warnings to the public and to the medical profession. It may be a warning about an antidote or about a dose, or it may be a warning that after a certain date it is necessary to reject the package concerned.
From the point of view of the manufacturers themselves, it is important that our requirements in this country should be co-ordinated internationally through the World Health Organisation in such a way that a drug passed as safe for marketing in this country and labelled in accordance with the statutory requirements in this country shall be acceptable automatically for sale in other countries. If there could be such co-ordination, it would be of enormous advantage to the British industry. It would greatly help the recognition of British drugs in other countries. I am very surprised that the industry is unwilling to accept some sort of statutory control on a national basis which could be adapted fairly readily to international needs.
I understand the problem with which my right hon. Friend was faced. Legislation takes time, and my right hon. Friend was, and perhaps still is, entitled to say, "I cannot guarantee that by this time next year there will be legislation on this matter passing through the House of

Commons". Nevertheless, I feel that there would not have been any grave public danger in a delay, say, of a year for legislation, if a delay of a year had had to take place, because at present everybody is alerted by what has happened with thalidomide and the manufacturers and agents and doctors and pharmacists and the public are all greatly concerned about the possible dangers of new drugs. We could safely have waited for a year, if it had been a year we had to wait.
The timetable which I should have liked my right hon. Friend to adopt would have been the publication of a White Paper in July, or October at the latest. I am sure that in the Ministry there is all the information needed collected by the Working Party, which has already been mentioned, which would enable my right hon. Friend to publish a White Paper indicating the sort of legislative procedure which the Government had in mind. If that had been published by October at the latest, it could have been criticised between October and the end of the year, and by the spring, or earlier, next year, there could have been a Bill. I still ask my right hon. Friend whether he cannot tell us that there will be a White Paper, indicating the sort of legislation which, as the majority as well as the minority report and he himself have said, is urgent.
I must have regard to the wishes of other hon. Members to take part in the debate, so I will conclude by saying that the present machinery for the provision of the manufacture and the distribution of drugs and medicines in this country is in a state of complete chaos. As the secretary of the Pharmaceutical Society, I have lived with this for thirty years of my professional life. I am appalled by the way in which six or seven different authorities acting under six or seven different Acts are inefficiently trying to handle this problem. If there was ever a jungle of administration which needed clearing up and tidying, it is this.
For all those reasons, I hope that my right hon. Friend will use the opportunity which his Working Party's Report has given him to clear up this administrative jungle and come to the House with proposals, first, in a White Paper and then in legislation, as soon as possible, to put the matter on a rational basis.

8.44 p.m.

Mr. James Boyden: The arguments of the hon. Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead), backed by his very great experience, ought to make the Minister reconsider his action on the Cohen Report. I could only embroider the hon. Member's case and not advance it, and so I propose to turn to the point which the hon. Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) made about statistics.
I was astonished at the way in which the right hon. Gentleman interrupted the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) about the figures for entries into medical schools. The right hon. Gentleman did it so smugly. He knows enough about the shortage of doctors to know that it was quite wrong to imply that the 16 per cent. increase in intake was a great achievement. For years he and his predecessors held back the entry into medical schools, along the lines of the Willink Report. From this side of the Committee we plagued him with questions asking him to revise the figures, and when he did he merely brought them up to their previous level. Now he makes great capital about adding a further 5 per cent.
What is the position in medical schools now? There is a backlog of about five years of people who ought to have been in but who are not. Schools are overcrowded. University lecturers are doing research in holes and corners. It takes super-women to get into medical school. Our dental research lags far behind that of other countries, and even the University Grants Committee has drawn attention to the lack of money and facilities devoted to dental research. The school medical service is short handed. The school dental service is even worse.
The Porritt Report on medical aid to overseas countries makes a disparaging reference to our post-graduate education in non-teaching regional hospitals. In the event of a conflict between India and Pakistan—and one hopes that this will not happen—the right hon. Gentleman knows that the hospital service might collapse because of junior medical officers being called home. It is therefore quite wrong of the Minister to give the impression, as he did this afternoon, that 16 per cent. represents a great achievement.
I want to follow up the statement made by the hon. Member for Hertford that what the Minister does, even when he gives accurate statistics—and that is not very often—is to measure the existing situation. The right hon. Gentleman knows that medical and scientific knowledge is doubling every ten years, and therefore the pace of the advance in the hospital service and in the medical field ought to be very much greater than the miserable figures that he gave the Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) referred to the increasing complexity of medical techniques and to new techniques that have been brought about through the advance of scientific knowledge. These advances call for an increase not only in the number of doctors but in the number of those people who stand behind the doctors, and I do not mean the nurses. I mean the technical auxiliaries and the professions ancillary to medicine in which the right hon. Gentleman not long ago gave a good example of his misleading statistics.
I hope that the Committee will forgive me if I take up the Minister's reply to my written Questions of 11th March, which was a perfectly reasonable set of Questions. I asked how many vacancies there were in the different aspects of supplementary professions. The Parliamentary Secretary replied:
This information is not collated centrally,"—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 1101 March, 1963; Vol. 673, c. 112–113.]
The hon. Gentleman then inspired a question by one of his hon. Friends to show how much better the situation had become since 1957, but he could easily have turned to a publication of his own, namely, the green Digest which I receive monthly, and which, on page 87 of No. 2 of last year carries the shortages of these grades of staff, and says that the Association of Hospital Management Committees circulated to all the hospital management committees in the country a request to be told the shortages that existed. Of the 379 committees circulated, 376 replied and gave the number of vacancies.
The Parliamentary Secretary could easily have taken this figure if the Ministry did not have it. I very much doubt whether the Ministry


did not have the figure, because it receives many returns from regional hospital boards and many statistics of this kind. I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman had applied his mind to it he could have answered my Question accurately. But even if he could not have done so, he could have obtained these figures which were produced by the Association and done the percentage arithmetic, that is, the 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. increase over 1961, and given that as an approximate answer.
What I propose to do is to put to the right hon. Gentleman the figures that the Association gave, my arithmetic of what the increase in numbers would have been since the Association collected the figures and my estimate of the total deficiency in these categories today. If the right hon. Gentleman does not agree with what I say, I hope that he will contradict me.
Taking the categories referred to in the Parliamentary Secretary's Answer of 11th March, the total number of almoners on the staffs of hospital boards at 30th September, 1962, was 1,022. The shortages given in the Association's report on 31st March, 1961, amounted to 218. According to the Answer by the Parliamentary Secretary, since 1957 there had been a 5 per cent. increase in the number of almoners, and since 1961 a 2 per cent. increase. I therefore calculate—and I hope that the hon. Member will challenge me if he thinks that I am wrong—that the present total deficiency of almoners in the National Health Service is about 20 per cent.
On 30th September, 1962, there were 471 psychiatric social workers. The number of shortages, according to the Association, was 125. According to the Parliamentary Secretary's figures there was an increase of 3 per cent. from 1961 to 1962. From that it would appear that there is at present a 25 per cent. deficiency in psychiatric social workers. In the interests of speed I will not refer to my further calculations, which are based on the same method; I will just state what the deficiencies are. In the case of therapeutic dietitians there is a deficiency of 40 per cent. One knows from experience that, in fact, there is not a therapeutic dietitian service. Even if the vacancies as set out in the hon.

Member's Written Answer related to what is regarded as the desirable figure, the fact is that there never has been a positive approach to diet in hospitals. It has been hamstrung all the time by false economies. Even if these figures are correct, they represent a very poor contribution to diet in the hospital service.
There is a deficiency of 16 per cent. in pharmacists; a deficiency of 25 per cent. in orthoptists; a deficiency of 20 per cent. in speech therapists; a 10 per cent. deficiency in hearing aid technicians and a small deficiency in supervisers of schools in hospitals for the mentally subnormal. In this case there has been a considerable increase in the number of staff. In the case of radiographers I make the deficiency about one-third, and in the follow-up services—which can make a great difference to rehabilitation—there is a deficiency of 25 per cent. in occupational therapists and about one-third in remedial gymnasts. In the case of physiotherapists the deficiency is about 25 per cent.
The shocking thing is that the work of the doctors could be greatly assisted by this category of workers, and the recovery of patients could be made much more effective. The numbers involved are relatively small. The total number of deficiencies in March, 1961, was less than 3,000, according to the Association's report. It is therefore clear that the hospital service is being spoiled for the sake of a ha'p'orth of tar. Far more efficiency could be produced from our very skilled consultants and doctors. Why does not the Minister make more vigorous efforts to recruit, and to solve the problem? It is almost entirely a matter of money.
A month ago I stood in for my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North at a meeting in Great Yarmouth of hospital administrators. I put to them the figures that I have just given the House. They agreed with my estimate, although they thought it was a little conservative. I asked them what was the reason for the shortages and they said that it was entirely a matter of pay. The salaries of these people are undervalued in relation to the work they do. This is true in the "Opportunity State" that hon. Members opposite so


frequently talk about. The social contributions of teachers and nurses and these grades are underrated. This is one reason why, so often, even when modern buildings are erected the subsequent development does not accord with the amount of capital invested in the building.
I now want to refer to something which never seems to cross the Minister's mind. What are the yardsticks for a good National Health Service? I want to quote a complacent utterance of the Minister of Housing and Local Government on 2nd May, because it typifies the attitude of the Treasury and of the Minister of Health. He said:
…the healthy phenomenon of a rapidly rising population … which causes us, like Alice, to have to run fast to overtake the need, let alone to eliminate it."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd May, 1963; Vol. 676, c. 1434.]
Hon. Gentlemen opposite are content with running on the same spot, or perhaps with making a tiny amount of progress. One of the things that they ought to do in relation to measurements in the Health Service is to devise a yardstick of improvement.
For example, medical science is expanding at enormous rates, shall we say doubling in ten years. The medical weight of the population is shifting very considerably. We have a torrent of young children and babies, which I always thought demanded rather more medical attention than people in middle life, and a great number of aged people who also demand extra special medical attention. But to measure the situation as it has been in the past in the medical health service is not to evolve the scientific administrative control which is necessary to evaluate the position.
The right hon. Gentleman ought to get his statisticians, like N.E.D.C., to try to work out what should be the needs of medical care in the., present situation because it is a situation entirely different from what it was even seven or eight years ago and certainly pre-war. One of the arguments one could level very forcibly against most of the present administration is that the people with the skill, doctors, nurses and the ancillary professions are not backed up by adequate capital investment. The right hon. Gentleman is just coming to that. It is a truism in economics that the more horse-power a worker has behind his

elbow, the more efficient he is and the more productive. In medical terms, this is equally true of hospitals. The better the hospital and the better the plant and equipment, the more efficient it will be, and the scarce resources of doctors and nurses will be better employed.
I was staggered to see the other day that the capital investment per worker, as it were, has varied between 5 per cent. and 8 per cent. over the years of Tory administration whereas in 1938 it was 20 per cent. These figures can be argued about, but certainly there is a very great difference in the last ten years in the technical aids which medical workers require to enable them to do their job more efficiently.
We see this, of course, in the figures for the investigations which my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North referred to. The number of investigations in the pathology departments in 1958 was 15·9 million and in 1961 20·6 million. There is the degree of extra scientific work which is needed merely to stand still. In radiological investigations the figure has risen from 18·2 million in 1953 to 22·5 million in 1961. The very sort of people who are needed to do this job are the people of whom there is the largest deficiency in numbers.

8.59 p.m.

Mr. W. A. Wilkins: I think that the Minister of Health can count himself fortunate tonight that he has been saved by the gong, because I understand that I have only two or three minutes in which to make one or two points, and I want to launch a very scathing attack on the administration of his Department. I think that he has been let off very lightly this afternoon in some of the criticisms that have been made and which could have been far more virulent in their attack on his administration.
I was rather surprised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Boyden) when he expressed surprise that the Minister should represent 16 per cent. intake of student doctors as a great achievement. I made a note when the Minister was speaking this afternoon and was tripping out the figures in the hope that the.Committee would assimilate them. I believe that this Minister could prove with figures or percentages why the Devil went to hell instead of heaven. He would prove that he was 10 per cent.


below the required standard for the heavenly abode. The right hon. Gentleman's whole attitude of mind revolves round figures and statistics. It is high time that he started to think in terms of human need and what we require in the hospital services if people are to be given proper attention.
I have time to make two further points only, and very quickly. The right hon. Gentleman attacked my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) about figures given twelve months ago dealing with the nursing situation, and he found his own figures to show that the situation today was improving rapidly and that there was now no really urgent problem.
I have here a report which is only a month old about the maternity service, on which I had wanted to say a great deal. This report states:
The staffing had been frozen owing to the limited financial allocation and therefore the staffing ratio was not up to the required establishment for the maternity department, apart from the excessive intake and to cope with the present problem pending alternative arrangements being made by the Regional Hospital Board. It was essential that the staff be brought up to strength.
The report added that a certain person:
emphasised that this was imperative if there was not to be a breakdown in the health of the staff which was already becoming evident.….
I made inquiries and found that these girls are almost at the point of exhaustion, largely owing to the intake of emergency maternity cases. We have had to listen to a great deal of nonsense today about the staffing position among nurses being all right.
I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon) is becoming agitated, but I wanted to say a great deal about the new private health service which is growing up within the Service. This method of buying privilege, and these new associations which invite people to belong to them because they can help to finance private consultant services in private consulting rooms is designed to be a passport to some priority treatment in hospital, otherwise there is no point in it. It will ultimately destroy the National Health Service if it goes much further. It will destroy it for the simple reason that if almost every-

one starts to enter this kind of service these people will no longer be able to guarantee the privileged position which they are now able to guarantee. I see again that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock is very anxious. I will stop there; the rest will keep.

9.2 p.m.

Dr. J. Dickson Mabon: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) for allowing me to begin my speech now. I realise what irritation he must feel at not being able to put many of his points. There are a number of hon. Members on this side of the Committee, but, unfortunately, not on the other, who have been anxious to speak in the debate and it might be argued that we should have had a two-day debate. There is certainly an argument for having another day to discuss the Minister's health and welfare plans for the development of community care.
I cannot possibly refer to all the subjects which have been discussed today. They have been interesting, and most of the speeches have been commendable and to the point. I want to deal with the biggest issue, which is the question of the control of drugs and the Minister's decision on it. It is fair to say that we have pushed the right hon. Gentleman from not doing anything from November, 1961, to June, 1962, into doing something. I can remember the debates and the reply of the previous Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health in June, 1962, refusing any inquiry or any consideration of some kind of control over new drugs. This has now been conceded, and we have driven the Minister to accept a voluntary system.
Now the Minister today has added new provisos which we must study before we can fully appreciate their meaning. They seem to be regulatory and to change what is, in theory, a voluntary scheme into a compulsory scheme in practice. The right hon. Gentleman's words were ominous. I am sure that doctors will read them with apprehension, for he warned that without fear of serious consequence no consultants could use a drug which had not gone through the voluntary system and that no manufacturer could market such a drug. It is a strange voluntary system which has these admonitions, with a finger pointed at both the doctors and the manufacturers.
If we can keep pressing the right hon. Gentleman, perhaps we can persuade him to have legislative reform to clear what the hon. Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead) described as the administrative jungle in drugs control and to introduce a compulsory system of registration and statutory assessment. It will be interesting to read the Minister's remarks in the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow about those countries which, he said, despite their control over drugs, did not prevent the thalidomide tragedy occurring in their lands. It would be interesting to look at the systems such as be insisted were comparable, to see why they were so defective.
We have always conceded that there is no system of drug control which can be absolutely safe. As long as medicine is experimenting into human disease and health generally we are bound to have tragedies and mistakes. Nevertheless, these mistakes must be qualitative and not quantitative. There may be some errors, but we must recognise them quickly to ensure that they are discovered before more errors occur. If we cannot have absolute safety, the mistakes must be qualitative; and this is what my hon. Friends and I seek. We want to have a system which is as good, if not better, than that possessed by any other country, based on experience as it evolves.
We insist on a statutory authority answerable to this House through the Minister of Health. We believe that this is fundamental. This is the position of the Labour Party which I am stating tonight and I am glad that some hon. Members opposite share that point of view. In time, the whole House will share it. The effectiveness of drugs is another matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Abertillery (Mr. Ll. Williams) mentioned the bill for drugs, the element of advertising in it, and so on. We spend £100 million on drugs for the Health Service, slightly over £5·5 million on advertising, sales representatives, free samples, and so on, to the medical profession.
Lord Cohen of Birkenhead was right when he commented that this was the most common way by which doctors got to know about new drugs. At best, he said, the information they received was biassed and, at worst, unreliable. That is a very damning indictment of a system of com-

munications—yet the Minister said today that he is to impose on the doctor the decision about the use of new drugs. It means that a doctor will have to hesitate before using them; that is, unless they carry the voluntary system's imprint.
Let us be fair to the Minister of Health. He is struggling hard to battle with the great American giants. I cannot refer to certain cases because they are sub judice, but I wish the right hon. Gentleman well in his battle with these big drug companies. He has, for a Conservative Minister, started a remarkable affair in the central agencies for buying drugs, because I understand that he used individual agencies to buy drugs from abroad.
I have had experience of this and I suppose that, in this connection, I should declare an interest. I am a visiting physician at the Manor House Hospital, which is owned by the Industrial Orthopaedic Society, a charitable, nonprofit making body which is not in the Health Service. I am sure that some of the difficulties it has experienced apply to other hospitals, not necessarily those in the Health Service—I am thinking of private nursing homes and the like. My experience will help to prove to hon. Members opposite what is happening. While I know that my hon. Friends are aware of this difficulty, my illustration will help them to realise it even more keenly, for everyone should be aware of the price arrangements by which drugs are bought and sold.
There is a certain United States subsidiary company in this country which will sell a hospital antibiotic tablets at £63 per 1,000. If it is a Health Service hospital using the Minister's mechanism, the same drugs—admittedly, manufactured in another country but pharmacologically as good—can be got for £7 15s. per 1,000. If the hospital is not in the Health Service, like the one I visit, one must pay £42 per 1,000 tablets. I can never understand how the drug companies can justify these differentials. The whole thing seems incredible to me. The Government have encouraged this single buying agency with which the Minister is in contact and after furtheii7 negotiation Manor House Hospital has been able to obtain the tablets for £25 per 1,000, substantially less than it would cost to buy them from


the American firm in Britain. But is this good enough?
After the discussions and conversations I have had, on the telephone and in other ways, about this matter I am left wondering whether we are doing as much as we ought to do. Does the Minister buy these antibiotics and other drugs—over which he is trying to fight the great United States firms—for the chemists, for the G.P.s? I do not think so. But I should be delighted if the Secretary of State for Scotland—who, as we are told by Conservative Members from time to time, administers a very expensive service in Scotland—would tell us.
Do Scottish chemists pay the retail price for antibiotics, or do they get them cheaper by buying from abroad, as we have done by invoking Section 46 of the Patents Act? That interests me. It would help to reduce the drug bill as a whole in a quite legitimate manner, and it would also reduce the prescribing costs of doctors—that nightmare which pursues the conscientious physician, ever anxious to know whether the local prescribing committee will come down on him like a ton of bricks because he has been trying to give patients what he thought were the best drugs for them.
In my opinion, the time is long overdue for an inquiry into the economics of the drug industry. There are some firms which do excellent work and take modest profits. There are others, particularly non-British firms, which take huge profits from this island. We should inquire into them. The party opposite has allowed this to go on. One or two hon. Members opposite are openly identified with United States subsidiaries. This penetration into our Health Service drug market by American companies is, to my mind, a very undesirable thing, because of the way it has developed. The party opposite has encouraged it, as they sold out Trinidad Oil and Ford's. It might be said that now the motto of the Prime Minister is "Americanisation before nationalisation".

Lord Balniel: I do not disagree with the point which the hon. Gentleman is making. But there are sections of the industry in my constituency which are American-owned pharmaceutical companies, and before he makes these

general allegations I think that it would be preferable if he specified the companies to which he is referring. There are, of course, some bad companies. But these general allegations tend to damage the respectable companies.

Dr. Mabon: I do not wish to damage any respectable company. I do not propose to mention names. But let us appoint a referee to find out which are the bad and which are the good companies, since both the hon. Member and I seem to be agreed that there are bad and good. If we were to set up a committee of inquiry to examine the drug industry, I think that the results would be interesting.
I wish to refer to another item of substance in this debate. There were many interesting items. But obviously I can deal only with the principal ones, and I wish to refer to the relationship of the hospital plan—which has been revised for the second time officially and perhaps in fact for the third time—with the health and welfare Blue Book which the Minister took great joy in mentioning. With the Hospital Plan on the one side and this Blue Book on the other, the problem is to strike the right balance between hospital, residential and domiciliary services as they affect the elderly and the chronic sick. I suggest that that problem has not been studied, never mind solved.
The hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden), in a good speech—I tried to defend the hon. Gentleman against the Chair on one occasion—called for more statistics. I agree with him. That is the whole point. There is an appalling lack of statistics in a book like this which has such a great potential for being the key for the future "march forward" to that glorious vision to which the Minister referred as lying ahead in the 1970s. It is remarkable how gloriously irresponsible the Government were last year in talking about the Hospital Plan, which was a completely baseless assessment of the number and categories of hospital beds. Only sporadic surveys were carried out. There was no research and no inquiries, and the revision which was published contained no information of substance as to how these beds were calculated. I mention specifically geriatric, mental and maternity beds. According to the figures


for Scotland, we do not even have geriatric beds officially.
But we have an excellent and terrible example of what is happening here. These geriatric beds are intimately connected with health and welfare. They all stand or fall together. Here I want to quote from the sober, respectable, too often Conservate, sometimes a little Liberal, but never Labour, Scotsman. Its headline on 23rd March, 1963, said:
Aged die waiting for beds".
The first sentence of the story read:
There are 377 old people on the waiting list for geriatric beds in the Edinburgh region and it is understood that last year almost 250 died while on the waiting list
Never did a "yellow" Press tabloid scream out more sensational headlines than that one. But it is accurate. This statement is backed up by a letter from five consultants in the geriatric service who have been in correspondence with the Secretary of State about this. Edinburgh is not at all the least prosperous area in Scotland. Indeed, it is often considered to be the most bourgeois city and the wealthiest in Scotland. If that is true, what must it be like elsewhere?
Has any assessment of the need for geriatric beds been made properly? Is there any understanding of what is needed? The Secretary of State has not even revised his plan. The Minister of Health can be excused, because he has at least made another wild guess about what he should do in 1962. The Secretary of State has not even done that. Perhaps, however, he is more sensible and is waiting for more evidence. Perhaps he should be commended for not publishing a Scottish Blue Book and has made no attempt to try to match the Minister of Health's wild guesses in this affair.
The idea of having these beds and of building up community services is to discharge patients. The ideal is, "Get the mentally sick and deficient out of hospital; get the physically chronically sick, who should be in half-way houses, out of hospital; let us get domiciliary services built up and get people out of hospital". But how can one get them out of hospital when there is nowhere for them to go?
The assessment has not been properly made. The Minister talked today of the plans being within a national framework of national purpose and national

standards. I can go with him in what he says about national framework and national purpose, because those words are meaningless, but what about national standards? The fact is that there are no common standards applicable to all local authorities in this group. In fact, this is but a hotchpotch of arrangements which each local authority proposes without any idea of what the national guidance should be. Not a single piece of advice is offered.
How many home helps do we need? Let us first take the basic criticism of the Blue Book. It refers to per 1,000 of population. But It should be talking, as the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West did, about per 1,000 of the population aged 65 and over. That is the point. The Blue Book at least gives acknowledgment to the fact that the elderly population will increase and it gives various statistics on population projections until 1972. But there is no attempt at an assessment of the staff required per 1,000 of this 65 and over age group.
For example, the hon. Member for Bournemouth, West talked about home helps and how Bournemouth was anxious to do all this, although his plea was, "Please do not raise the rates". I do not know how he managed to combine these two aspects. His was a remarkable speech. He asked us to do so many things, but told us that we should not raise the rates. He believes that we should get it all through general grants. But the total cost of these services he was referring to would be about £200 million, so at least £80 million must go on the rates unless there are special Exchequer grants of which no lint has been given.
Is there any attempt to suggest how many home helps per,000 of the population aged 65 and over are needed? There is none. But one or two social scientists have suggested that perhaps the figure should be 15. The only indication we have from the Government was contained in the Ministry of Health's Report for 1961. On page 56 are listed some local variations. For instance, the number of persons helped in this way in a year varies between 1·5 and 12 per 1,000 of the population. The net cost of a home help per 1,000 of population varied between £10 and £450. I have with me a huge list which I will not embarrass the Committee by reading. It deals with all the boroughs of England


and Wales and their populations of people aged 65 and over. It shows the vast difference there is between the home help service in one area compared with another. The only local authority coming anywhere near the ideal of 15 home helps per 1,000 of the population 65 and over is Oldham.
The ratio in Bournemouth is 1·8 per 1,000. By 1972, despite all the wonderful schemes of the Minister—produced by Bournemouth, of course—the ratio will still only be 4·8. Yet the figure recommended by these social scientists is 15 per 1,000. Do not we realise how inadequate this programme is? It is founded on unwarranted assumptions. Not a single piece of scientific social inquiry has been done.
One can go through these plans and find wonderful and pious phrases about how the Government will see about one thing and how further study is needed in another—and so on, and so on. This is, after all, supposed to be praised as a great example of the Minister's intellect. But the right hon. Gentleman is really struggling between the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde within him—the intellectual Jekyll who wants to do the right thing and the Conservative Research Centre politician Hyde struggling to do the propaganda thing. And so the struggle goes on.
Now I turn to residential homes. How many should there be per 1,000 of the population aged 65 and over in any given area? The Minister does not know. He said on one occasion in this Blue Book that there is no evidence for suggesting a possible range, but later that 18 to 22 places per 1,000 might be a good idea.
We want to see more elderly people in flatlets, integrated into the community with domiciliary services to help. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, West, to whom I am thoroughly indebted for his speech, referred to this. Until last year 3,400 such flatlets were constructed, which is 0·6 per 1,000 of the population aged 65 and over.
What is the target figure here? Does the Minister know? Again, the only people we can go to are a few social scientists, whose opinion is that it should be 50—not 0·6—per 1,000 persons aged 65 and over. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, West said that this was

a comprehensive and masterly analysis. Was there ever such a damning of a document? That was irony of the first order. There is one thing about the Scots. At least, we had the good sense to start a national morbidity survey. We have not got the answer.
The previous Secretary of State for Scotland thought, "Let us find out what the extent of the problem is. Let us find out exactly what the problem will be. Let us try to project it in figures of disease as well as of life expectancy". The Minister on the other hand has not even started this yet. He has spent £29,000 inquiring into morbidity of inpatients in certain hospitals. We must have the overall figures. We must have a summary of the national morbidity pattern as well as other population assessments which are made before we can talk in extravagant terms of 1972 and 1982, as the Minister does. It is a most unscientific approach not to proceed into these realms of prediction and difficult assessment without all the facts which one can command and all the inquiries which can possibly be conducted.
These two Blue Books, "Hospital Plan" and "Health and Welfare Services", must be followed by a third book, "Development of General Practice". In this Blue Book they refer to the fact that we have 21 health centres and by 1972 the Minister, God bless him, will give us 47. That is massive marching on. That is a rallying call! This is great Utopia. There will be 47 health centres in a country with a population of more millions than that. It is utterly farcical.
The hon. and gallant Member for Worthing (Sir 0. Prior-Palmer) told us about the way in which his constituents had bean frustrated. He waved the letters before us. He told us that for five years he had been arguing for a better hospital for Worthing. Then the Minister came along with his Hospital Plan. What happened then? The hon. and gallant Gentleman in effect said this, "Now I am told that we will get a hospital one-third of the size of the one we wanted, perhaps in about 1982 Or perhaps in 1977, but not for some time". This is what has happened in many constituencies with many hospitals. Those of us, of whom I am one, who


have been agitating for hospitals in our own area have seen our hospital programme move back because of the ten-year plan. I have a list showing that I was getting an extension in my constituency for maternity beds and outpatient departments in 1962—just gone—and 1963. still with us. This is now postponed again. We shall get it in 1967, if we are lucky.
This Hospital Plan and these Health and Welfare Services can have only two effects on hon. Gentlemen opposite. Either hon. Members opposite believe it to be true and are absolutely mesmerised by their own propaganda, or they do not believe that and realise that this is a trick to deceive the electorate. It must be one or the other. Perhaps they are not reading the books at all but merely believing everything the Minister says.
We were told by the Minister, when he introduced his savage cuts in 1960, that the hospital building programme would be financed by the new health taxes. These health taxes have raised in each full year a sum in excess of £68 million. Yet the hospital building programme for England and Wales was £31 million in 1961–62, £37 million in 1962–63 and may be £48 million in 1963–64. This is a net profit of a considerable number of millions, and in the present year £20 million. The expenditure will never rise above an average of £70 million a year, so the Minister will still make a good bargain out of this manoeuvre.
It is fair to say that when the Minister talks about the future he is the most generout of men. He has built more paper hospitals than any Minister of Health ever did before. He has more blueprint community centres than were ever dreamed of by the most Utopian social scientist. That is all he will be remembered for after the three long hard years that we have had him at this Ministry. He is supposed to be the Prime Minister's propagandist to show the country that in fact the Tory party really believed in the Health Service. As a propagandist, he is a dead loss. Despite his years in the Conservative Research Centre, he has not done very well as a propagandist. The country sees this. Even the working man knows pie in the sky when he sees it, and this is very much pie in the sky. But I will say this for the Minister. As a Treasury hatchet man he is first-class.

9.28 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Noble): I am sure the Committee has listened with interest to the whole course of the debate and particularly to the speech of the hon. Member for Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon). He has on many occasions in the past made this attack about paper hospitals. This is a very easy one to make, though not perhaps a very suitable one to come from the Opposition. None the less, it is a fact which anybody can see in bricks and mortar that the hospitals are in fact going up and they are going up steadily at a faster rate. {An HON. MEMBER: "Where?" I will give the hon. Member a list in a moment, if he wants it. The work in Scotland has kept up with the estimates we made. I think that the regional hospital boards deserve great credit for the skill and energy they have put into keeping these new and difficult first stages of their hospital building plans going.
I have been asked where this is happening. I can tell the hon. Member that in Scotland in the Northern Region hospitals at Fort William and Broadford in Skye are well under way. The hospital at Portree is starting next month. In the North-East Region a major extension to the Royal Infirmary at Aberdeen is just about to start. In the Eastern Region, the contract is going out this year for the first of the new big teaching hospitals—the £10 million project at Ninewells. In the South-Eastern Region, the Victoria Hospital at Kirkcaldy is making steady progress, and that is a £2½ million project. In the Western Region, the Yorkhill Hospital is finishing this year, and the hospital at Dunoon, in my own constituency, is well under way. They may be on paper, but they look very solid to me.
The problem of the old people has been referred to once or twice in this debate, and is one of very considerable importance. As far as we are able to discover from the latest figures from the Registrar-General on population trends, it is estimated that by 1970 there will be about 80,000 more people over the age of 65 than there are today. The hon. Gentleman may call that a guess, but it is estimated on the same sort of evidence that we have today, and it means that


we will have to find about 4.000 more places either in homes or hospitals.
The Committee has had a good many statistics today, but it is right to record the work that both local authorities and other people have done in this sphere. Local authorities in Scotland are at present running about 170 homes, providing places for rather more than 7,000 old people. In addition, 128 homes are run by various voluntary organizations—the Church of Scotland, and other religious denominations—which provide homes for about 4,500 people. Therefore, in residential homes at the moment, we have places for about 12,000 of these older people who require it. The estimate of an increase of 4,000 old people over the next seven or eight years is, therefore, not very difficult to achieve if we continue with the policy we have been carrying out.
Over and above this problem of homes—

Mr. William Ross: Can the Secretary of State tell me what the waiting list is at each of these homes—or at all of them?

Mr. Noble: I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman that, but I can tell him that the number of places has been increasing steadily. I am afraid that I have not the figures for the total number of people waiting—

Mr. E. G. Willis: Not enough.

Mr. Noble: Of course there are not enough places, or enough of anything that anybody in the world wants. The fact is that the problem is being tackled—and not only just in homes, and so on.
There has been a tremendous increase, and I am glad to see it, of services like meals on wheels. I am sure that the Committee appreciates the great work done by the W.V.S. in this realm. Its members in Scotland served very nearly a quarter of a million meals last year to elderly people in their homes. In addition, the district nurses paid over 1½ million visits to 50,000 old people, and the home helps assisted nearly 17,000 households. That does not seem to me to give a picture of

neglect and despair at all. It is a picture of very good co-operation between local authorities and other bodies that are doing their best to tackle an extremely difficult job, and doing it well.
The hon. Gentleman said that the Hospital Plan provides no extra beds for the elderly and the long-term sick. This is not true. It provides beds for an extra 800 or 900 people in Scotland, and further beds will be found, as they have been in the past, by the conversion of existing buildings as new hospitals take their place—

Dr. Dickson Mabon: I said that in the Hospital Plan for Scotland—Cmnd. 1602—there is no reference, unlike the English Command Paper, to geriatric beds—unless, of course, the Secretary of State intends to publish a new White Paper on hospital work.

Mr. Noble: I can give the hon. Gentleman the information that these beds are planned—

Mr. Willis: Not enough.

Mr. Noble: It is not right for the hon. Gentleman to keep on saying "Not enough" on every single point—

Mr. Willis: Mr. Willis rose>—

Mr. Noble: No, I shall not give way.
In the last few years we have increased the beds for these old people from 3,000 to 6,000 but, quite apart from the actual numbers, important though those are, the quality of nursing and the quality of the care for the old people is equally important. We are doing our best to increase the number of consultants on this side of the service. In fact, the number has doubled in the last three years, and I think that the Committee would want to pay a tribute to the nurses who staff these homes and hospitals, because their task is particularly arduous, and not always the most rewarding of the various nursing jobs.
Various hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. W. Hamilton), talked about the maternity position in Scotland. The position is that although we are up to the 75 per cent. hospital confinement rate that was recommended by the Montgomery Committee. there are, obviously, still places where the position needs improving. This


is not particularly so in Fife, West, because the hon. Member's constituency is up to the 75 per cent. in fact, the County of Fife is getting a greater share of hospital building than any other area in Scotland—

Mr. W. Hamilton: I cannot allow that statement to go unchallenged. The reason is, and the right hon. Gentleman knows it very well, the enormous backlog that has had to be made up, and the only consideration that the regional hospital board allowed the West Fife people seventy extra maternity beds between now and 1970.

Mr. Noble: The hon. Gentleman has made his point. I have made mine, that Fife is already receiving more money than any other county in Scotland.
There seems to be some difference of opinion in the Committee about nursing recruitment. On the one hand, the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) tells us that hospitals are turning away tens of thousands of nurses who want to come in, while, on the other hand, other hon. Members say that there are no nurses available at all. I believe that the truth is somewhere between those two. Certainly, in Scotland there is not a great number of nurses being turned away. Recruiting has been going up satisfactorily, and the pattern of staffing is getting better, not worse, because the number of trained nurses is increasing and not declining, and it is essential that the special skill of the trained nurse should not be dissipated in jobs which can be done by auxiliaries and others.
I come now to the points which have raised during the debate. The hon. Lady the Member for Cannock (Miss Lee) spoke of the different views of the hospital as seen through the eyes of the patient, the doctor, the nurse or whoever it might be. I agree very much with what the hon. Lady said about the need for humanity—she specified the sort of problems which some patients occasionally find or even some people who go in for pre-natal treatment may come across. Both my right hon. Friend and I have taken a direct and personal interest in this problem and have done everything we can to see that the different viewpoints of the hospital become one viewpoint. Clearly, whatever the statistics may prove, if we want an efficient

health service it must be based on the fact that the patient in hospital is happy and not agitated, worried and fussed. I agree very much with what the hon. Lady said about this. She emphasised, as I would emphasise, that this problem of the lack of humanity is not a problem which affects all hospitals; it affects only certain hospitals and, perhaps, certain individual people in them. On the whole, our hospital service is looking after its patients with great care and humanity.
The hon. Lady asked how much we can spend, and she suggested that we should fix amounts and stick to them. I can agree with her wholeheartedly in this because it is exactly what we are trying to dc. If it is a question of how much we can spend, we have our figure. If she, in due course, cares to give hers—she said that it was very difficult to calculate in advance—we shall listen to it with interest.
I took her point, though I ought not to expand on it now because it is slightly outside the scope of the debate, about the importance of housing for old people.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir O. Prior-Palmer), who made a powerful speech about the problems in his constituency, will probably forgive me if I do not discuss them in great detail because he is already in correspondence with my right hon. Friend. My constituents would, I think, be delighted to have so many hospitals close to them as my hon. and gallant Friend seems to have in Worthing, but I know that in different places different considerations apply.
The hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. Ll. Williams) produced one of the nicest phrases of the debate when he slightly changed the words of Browning and said that a man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what is an Opposition for? We have noticed this from these benches fairly consistently, and occasionally, I think, the general public notices it, too. The hon. Gentleman had half a point when he spoke about the problems of research, bat he was not quite right in saying that, if in a hospital higher pay has to be given in salaries for research, the amount of research has to be cut back to allow for the extra cost. This is not so. If there is an increase in salaries, it will be taken into consideration in calculating


the extra money given each year to the hospitals.
I agree that it can be extremely bad business to make cuts in hospital maintenance programmes which then pile up over the years and then, perhaps, lead to a much bigger bill in the end. But, if this is being done—I am not saying that it is-it is part and parcel of the task of the hospital authority to make up its own mind, within the allocation of money which it receives, about the priorities necessary in the spending of the money. I do not believe that hospital authorities deliberately cut back on maintenance knowing that, in a year or two, it will cost them a great deal more, unless there is something very urgent which they need more and which, probably, would cost them even a greater amount in the future. We believe that this sort of decision should be left to the hospital authorities and, on the whole, they are perfectly capable of making such decisions.
The hon. Gentleman spoke also, as others did, about the problem of nurses working a great deal of overtime. Having listened to many different speeches on this point, I am not quite sure that I have understood it clearly. There seems to be a confusion between two ideas. The first was that nurses should work for 44 hours a week only, or an 88-hour fortnight. The other suggestion was that they were working much longer hours in the fortnight. In my experience in Scotland, there may be odd instances of longer hours, but this is not by any means usual.
The other part of the same argument was whether working within the framework of the 88-hour fortnight, they should be paid overtime rates for working during Sundays or during the night. The profession of nursing—and the nurses are very proud of the fact that they are a profession—would, I think, be entirely undermined if we started paying overtime rates, because no other profession in the country pays overtime rates. I think that the nurses would lose something if we went on to that system. [Laughter.] The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) laughs, but that is true.
My hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Sir D. Robertson) spoke about the problems of the Highlands. It is certainly true, as every Highland Member knows, that it is very

much more expensive to be ill in the Highlands than in the towns because of the great distances involved in getting to and from hospital. My hon. Friend said that he had not previously taken part in health debates, but he made a useful contribution to this one. He is not in his place at the moment. Had he been there I should have been pleased to tell him that the hospital which he is keen to get in Wick is on the drawing board and, with luck, should be started within a very short time—a year or so. He seemed to think that it might well be ten or more years before he got it.

Mr. Ross: It could be, too.

Mr. Noble: The hon. Member for Fife, West asked why the nurses' award had not been referred to the National Incomes Commission. The main point here is that this was an arbitrated award by an independent body. The hon. Gentleman also asked about the question of board and lodging for student and junior nurses. I do not think it would be right for me to comment on the problem of the recent award, because it has not yet gone before the Whitley Council. I do not think it would be courteous to comment on it in this Chamber until the Council has considered it.
The hon. Member for Fife, West also asked what our plan was for community care. In Scotland, our staffing arrangements are rather better in one or two important respects than they are in England. The local authorities agreed with my Department that we should tackle our problem in a way different from the English one. We have set up, with their collaboration and help, various study groups on things like the dental services, school health and home nursing. As we get information about these problems we will take the steps necessary to correct them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Sir S. Storey) referred particularly to the problems of staffing in a local hospital. I do not think I can give my hon. Friend any useful information on that. He asked whether or not there had been some lack of appeal in the calling—in the profession—of nursing. I do not believe there is any evidence of this in the numbers of people coming forward today to join this service.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) asked whether we might carry out an experiment in health centres in Scotland. I am delighted to be able to tell him that another of our health centres in Scotland is being opened at Cumbernauld tomorrow. In England, the Standing Medical Advisory Committee is reporting this year on the whole problem of health centres and group centres and so on for general practitioners. On the problem of the Chinese eggs; I am told that the arrangements for pasteurisation are now in satisfactory form, and I hope very much that we shall have no more trouble from this source.
My noble Friend the Member for Hertford (Lord Balniel) referred to an estimated requirement of 1·8 mental beds per l,000 of the population in 1975 and the arguments advanced in a recent P.E.P. pamphlet. My right hon. Friend will certainly continue not only to watch the trends in demand for psychiatric beds, but to take into account the results of research into mental illness and mental treatment. I should, however, make it clear that the capital building programme does not commit my right hon. Friend to the l·8 ratio.
The new building in England and Wales will be in the form of psychiatric units associated with general hospitals. The need for these is not in question. For the rest, my right hon. Friend is concerned only with the rate at which and the extent to which existing provision in the mental hospitals will become redundant so that it can be dispensed with. In Scotland our circumstances are rather different, because most of our mental hospitals are already located in the centres of population.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Eden) made what was clearly a very important speech, because he provided almost all the material for the hon. Member for Greenock to make his impassioned speech. It makes me extremely sorry that I happened to be out of the Chamber when my hon. Friend was making this speech, because I clearly missed a great event; but I hope that the publicity which has been given to my hon. Friend by the hon. Member opposite will make up for my [pt being able to say very much myself.
The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) raised three subjects. The first was the subject of children's teeth. I was very glad to hear that he supported the fluoridation of water supplies, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Sir H. Linstead). The second matter he raised was the decline of amenity beds and the increase in private beds. I have made some inquiries about this and I believe that he is absolutely wrong and that the position is the reverse of what he stated.

Mr. Baird: Can the right hon. Gentleman give figures for private and amenity beds?

Mr. Noble: I do not have the exact figures, but I believe that our experience is exactly the reverse of what the hon. Member stated. His third question was about consultants and the increase in their part-time service. Again our evidence is that consultants are tending to give more and more of their time to the Health Service and more are becoming whole lime in the Service.
I do not want to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Putney into very deep waters on the question of drugs. I thought that he put his case very clearly. I thought that my right hon. Friend put the Government's case equally clearly and concisely at the beginning 4 the debate. The hon. Member for Greenock specifically asked whether my right hon. Friend or I could buy drugs for chemists under the existing arrangements. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—we cannot do this, because it is only for the purposes of the service of the Crown that my right hon. Friend and I are able to use Section 46 of the Patents Act to buy these drugs for hospitals. As this case is still sub judice, perhaps I had better not say any more about it.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Wilkins) in a very short speech—and that was not his fault—said that the tone of this debate had been much too quiet. I am sure that the Committee would have been delighted if the hon. Gentleman had been fortunate enough to catch the eye of the Chair earlier and had developed with some ferocity the various points that he wanted to make. But having listened to most of the debate, my impression is that if it was too quiet,


it was too quiet because the points about which hon. Members felt strongly were mostly smaller points of detail and not the great points.
The picture which has been represented quite frequently while I have been on my feet is that not enough has been done. We all want more of any good service that is going, but I believe that judged on the basis of staff, whether they be doctors, or nurses, or any other form of staff in the Service, all of which have been increasing, judged on the volume of treatment which the Service is giving, judged on the modernisation and better organisation of existing hospitals, and on the new hospitals which are being built, and judged on the general health of our nation, our National Health Service,

Division No. 108.]
AYES
9.58 p.m.


Ainsley, William
Grlffiths, W. (Exchange)
Moody, A. B.


Awbery, Stan (Bristol, Central)
Grimond, Rt. Hon. J.
Mulley, Frederick


Bacon, Miss Alice
Gunter, Ray
Neal, Harold


Baird, John
Hamilton, William (West Fife)
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)


Barnett, Guy
Harper, Joseph
Noel-Baker,Rt.Hn.Phllip(Derby,S.)


Beaney, Alan
Hart, Mrs. Judith
Orem, A. E.


Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.
Hayman, F. H.
Oswald, Thomas


Bence, Cyril
Healey, Denis
Padley, W. E.


Bennett, J. (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Henderson,Rt.Hn.Arthur(RwlyRegis)
Paget, R. T.


Benson, Sir George
Herbison, Miss Margaret
Pargiter, G. A.


Blackburn, F.
Hill, J. (Midlothian)
Parker, John


Blyton, William
Hilton, A. V.
Parkln, B. T.


Boardman, H.
Holman, Percy
Paton, John


Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.
Hooson, H. E,
Pavltt, Laurent.


Bowden, Rt. Hn. H, W. (Leics,S.W.)
Houghton, Douglas
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)


Bowles, Frank
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Pentland, Norman


Boyden, James
Hoy, James H.
Popplewell, Ernest


Bradley, Tom
Hughes, Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Prentice, R. E.


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Hughes, Emrya (S. Ayrshire)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Brockway, A. Fenner
Hunter, A. E.
Probert, Arthur


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Janner, Sir Barnett
Proctor, W. T.


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Jay, Rt. Hon. Douglas
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry


Carmichael, Neil
Jeger, George
Randall, Harry


Chapman, Donald
Jenkins, Roy (8techford)
Rankin, John


Collick, Percy
Jones, Elwyn (Wear Ham, S.)
Redhead, E. C.


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, J. I[...]dwal (Wlexham)
Reid, William


Craddock, George (Bradford, 8.)
Jones, T. W. (Merloneth)
Reynolds, G. W.


Crosland, Anthony
Kenyon, Clifford
Rhodes, H.


Grossman, R. H. S.
Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Lawson, George
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)


Dalyell, Tam
Ledger, Ron
Robertson, John (Paisley)


Deer, George
Lee, Frederick (Newton)
Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)


Delargy, Hugh
Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)
Rogers, G. H. R. (Kensington, N.)


Dempsey, James
Lewis, Arthur (West Ham, N.)
Ross, William


Diamond, John
Lipton, Marcus
Short, Edward


Donnelly, Desmond
Loughlin, Charles
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Driberg, Tom
Lubbock, Erie
Slater, Joseph (Sedgefield)


Ede, Rt. Hon. C.
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Small, William


Edwarde,Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)
McBride, N.
Snow, Julian


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
MacColl, James
Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank


Edwards, Walter (Stepney)
MacDermot, Niall
Steele, Thomas


Fernyhough, E.
McKay, John (Wallsend)
Stones, William


Fitch, Alan
Mackie, John (Enfield, East)
Strachey, Rt. Hon. John


Foot, Dingle (Ipswich)
McLeavy, Frank
Stross,Dr.Barnett(Stoke-on-Trent,C.)


Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)


Forman, J. C.
Manuel, Archie
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)
Mapp, Charles
Thompson, Dr. Alan (Dunfermline)


Galpern, Sir Myer
Mason, Roy
Thomson, G. M. (Dundee, E.)


Ginsburg, David
Mayhew, Christopher
Thornton, Ernest


Grey, Charles
Millan, Bruce
Wade, Donald


Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)
Mitchison, G. R.
Wainwright, Edwin


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)
Monslow, Walter
Warbey, William

which, as the hon. Lady the Member for Cannock, said is the best in the world, is expanding and improving steadily and that the Committee and the country knows it well.

Mr. K. Robinson: I invited the Secretary of State for Scotland to contradict the figure of 7 per cent. which I quoted. As the right hon. Gentleman has not done so, I assume that the figure is correct.
In view of the failure of the Government to reply to our criticisms, and because of the appalling complacency of Ministers with regard to the Health Service, I beg to move, That Item Class VI, Vote 13 (Ministry of Health), be reduced by £5.

Question put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 170, Noes 229.

Watkins, Tudor
Williams, D. J. (Neath)
Woof, Robert


Weitzman, David
Williams, LI. (Abertillery)
Yates, Victor (Ladywood)


Wells, William (Walsall, N.)
Williams, W.R. (Openshaw)



White, Mrs. Eirene
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Wilkins, W. A.
Willis, E. G. (Edinburgh, E.)
Mr. McCann and Mr. Whitlock.


Willey, Frederick
Winterbottom, F. E.





NOES


Agnew, Sir Peter
Gibson-Watt, David
Mawby, Ray


Alliken W.T
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, Central)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.


Allan, Robert (Paddington, S.)
Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)
Mills, Stratton


Allason, James
Glover, Sir Douglas
Miscampbell, Norman


Arbuthnot, John
Glyn, Dr. Alan (Clapham)
Montgomery, Fergus


Atkins, Humphrey
Glyn, Sir Richard (Dorset, N.)
Morgan, William


Awdry, Daniel (Chippenham)
Goodhew, Victor
Morrison, John


Balniel, Lord
Gough, Frederick
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles


Barter, John
Gower, Raymond
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Batsford, Brian
Grosvenor, Lt.Col. R. G.
Noive, Airey


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Gurden, Harold
Nicholls, Sir Harmar


Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Noble, Rt. Hon. Michael


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos &amp; Fhm)
Hamilton, Michael (Wellingborough)
Nugent, Rt. Hon. Sir Richard


Biffen, John
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Oakshott, Sir Hendrie


Biggs Davison, John
Harris, Reader (Heston)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Bingham, R. M.
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Orr-Ewing, C. Ian


Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere (Macclesf'd)
Osborn, John (Hallam)


Black, Sir Cyril
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Osborne, Sir Cyril (Louth)


Bourne-Arton, A.
Hastings, Stephen
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Boyd-Carpenter, lit. Hon. John
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel
Partridge, E.


Brains, Bernard
Henderson, John (Cathcart)
Pearson, Frank (ClItheroe)


Bromley-Davenport,Lt.-Col.S1rWalter
Hicks Beach, Maj. W.
Percival, Ian


Brooman-White, R.
Hiley, Joseph
Peyton, John


Brown, Alan (Tottenham)
Hill, Dr. Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)
Plckthern, Sir Kenneth


Browne, Percy (Torrington)
Hill, Mrs. Eveline (Wythenshawe)
Pitt, Dame Edith


Bryan, Paul
Hirst, Geoffrey
Pott, Percivall


Buck, Antony
Hobson, Sir John
Powell, Rt. Hon. J. Enoch


Bullard, Denys
Hocking, Philip N.
Price, David (Eastleigh)


Bulk's, Wing Commander Eric
N. Holland, Philip
Prior-Palmer, Brig. Sir Otho


Burden, F. A.
Hollingworth, John
Pym, Francis


Campbell,Rr. Hon.SIrD.(Belfast,S.)
Hope, Rt. Hon. Lord John
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Campbell, Gordon (Moray &amp; Nairn)
Hopkins, Alan
Redmayne, Rt. Hon. Martin


Carr, Robert (Mitcham)
Hornby, R, P.
Rees, Hugh


Channon, H. P. G.
Hornsby-Smith, Rt. Hon. Dame P.
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Chataway, Christopher
Howard, Hon. G. R. (St. Ives)
Renton, Rt. Hon. David


Clark, William (Nottingham, S.)
Howard, John (Southampton, Test)
Ridsdale, Julian


Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portemth,W.)
Hughes-Hallett, Vice-Admiral John
Robinson, Rt. Ho. Sir F. (B'pool, S.)


Cleaver, Leonard
Hughes-Young, Michael
Roots, William


Cole, Norman
Hulbert, Sir Norman
Reamer, Col. Sir Leonard


Cooke, Robert
Hurd, Sir Anthony
Scott-HopkIns, James


Cooper, A. E.
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Seymour, Leslie


Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
James, David
Shaw, M.


Cordeaux, Lt Col. J. K.
Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)
Skeet, T. H. H.


Onstain, A. P.
Jennings, J. C.
Smith, Dudley (Br'ntf'd &amp; Chiswick)


Craddock, Sir Beresford (Sperthorne)
Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)
Smyth, Rt. Hon. Brig. Sir Joseph


Crawley, Aidan
Johnson, Eric (Blackley)
Spearman, Sir Alexander


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. Sir Oliver
Johnson Smith, Geoffrey
Stanley, Hon. Richard


Crowder, F. P.
Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Stevens, Geoffrey


Currie, G. B. H.
Jones, Rt. Hn. Aubrey (Hall Green)
Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)


Dalkeith, Earl of
Kaberry, Sir Donald
Stodart, J. A.


Dance, James
Kerby, Capt. Henry
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm


d'Avigdor-Goidsmid, Sir Henry
Kershaw, Anthony
Storey, Sir Samuel


Derides, Rt. Hon. W. F.
Kimball, Marcus
Studhoime, Sir Henry


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Summers, Sir Spencer


Donaldson, Crmir. C. E. M.
Leather, Sir Edwin
Taylor, Frank (Wah'srr, Moss Side)


Doughty, Charles
Legge-Bourke, Slr Harry
Taylor, Sir William (Bradford, N.)


Drayson, G. B.
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Teeling, Sir William


du Cann, Edward
Lindsay, Sir Martin
Thomas, Peter (Conway)


Duncan, Sir James
Litchfield, Capt. John
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)


Eden, John
Lloyd,Rt.Hn.Geoffrey(SutMC'dfield)
Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carahalton)
Longden, Gilbert
Tiley, Arthur (Bradford, W.)


EllioR,R.W.(Newc'tile-upon-Tyne,N.)
Loveys, Walter H.
Touche, Rt. Hon. Sir Gordon


Emery, Peter
Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Turner, Colin


Farr, John
Madden, Sir Stephen
Tweedsmuir, Lady


Fell, Anthony
MacArthur, lan
Van Straubenzee, W. R.


Fisher, Nigel
McLaren, Martin
Vane, W. M. F.


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Maclean,SirFitzroy(Bute&amp;N.Ayrs)
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hon. Sir John


Forrest, George
Macleod, Rt. Hn. lain (Enfield, W.)
Wakefield, Sir Waveli


Foster, John
McMaster, Stanley R.
Walder, David


Fraser, Ian (Plymouth, Sutton)
Maddan, Martin
Walker, Peter


Freeth, Denril
Maitland, Sir John
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Sir Derek


Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.
Markham, Major Sir Frank
Wells, John (Maldstone)


Gammans, Lady 
Marshall, Douglas
Whitelaw, william


Gardner, Edward
Matthews, Gordon (Meriden)
Whitelaw, William




Williams, Dudley (Exeter)







Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)
Wise, A. R
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Mr. Chichester-Clark and


Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)
Worsley, Marcus
Mr. Finlay.

Original Question again proposed.

Sir Stephen McAdden: Sir Stephen McAdden (Southend, East) rose—

It being after Ten o'clock, The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress and ask leave to sit again.

Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on the Education (Scotland) Bill exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House). [Mr. lain Macleod.]

Orders of the Day — EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for consideration, as amended (in the Standing Committee), read.

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Bill be re-committed to a Committee of the whole House in respect of the proposed Clause (Bursaries for children at special schools) and the Amendment to the Title, line 11, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. William Hannan.—[Mr. Lawson.]

Question amended, by adding, at the end:
and in respect of the Amendment to Clause 1, page 3, line 1, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of Mr. William Ross"—[Mr. Ross.]

and, as amended, agreed to.

Bill immediately considered in Committee.

[SIR WILLIAM ANSTRUTHER-GRAY in the
Chair]

Clause 1.-(ESTABLISHMENT OF BOARD TO CONDUCT EXAMINATIONS, ETC.)

10.10 p.m.

Mr. E. G. Willis: I beg to move, in page 3, line 1, to leave out from "State" to "grants" and to insert "shall make annual".
In doing so. I should like to protest against the growing practice by the Leader of the House, who I see is now leaving the Chamber, of putting down Scottish business for after ten o'clock. This is a bad practice to develop and one to which we shall have to give some thought if it is to be carried on. I see that the right hon. Gentleman has now returned to the Chamber but I noted that he does not stay after ten o'clock to listen to this kind of business.
The Amendment seeks to delete the words "may from time to time" in subsection (5) and to insert "shall make annual". The subsection would then read:
The Secretary of State shall make annual grants to the Board which shall be applied by them towards meeting their expenses.
The Clause, however, gives the Secretary of State for Scotland powers by regulation to establish a board for the conduct of examinations. The board will have the purposes which are enumerated

in the Clause. The regulations are framed by the right hon. Gentleman and he can impose such duties in addition to those mentioned in the Clause as he thinks necessary or desirable. The regulations may also empower the Secretary of State to give the board directions for the discharge of its functions as appear to the right hon. Gentleman to be expedient.
In other words, the real boss of the board is the Secretary of State, but when it comes to paying for the board it is not the right hon. Gentleman who pays but the local authorities, because subsection (4) says:
Every education authority shall, at such times as may be fixed by the Secretary of State, contribute to the funds of the Board such sums as may be fixed by him after consultation with …
various local authority bodies. Instead of suggesting that the Secretary of State should make annual grants towards the financing of the board, the Clause goes on to say that "from time to time" he may make grants.
What do the words "from time to time" mean? The right hon. Gentleman might make grants next year, but he might not make another for a very long time. The Tories seem to have forgotten that there are several years remaining in the 1960s. The next grant might be in the 1970s, because Tory minds are on the 1970s. It is not uncharitable, therefore, to assume this, and there is nothing in the Clause to provide that a grant shall be paid before 1980 or 1990 or the year 2,000, or that a grant shall be paid at all. The right hon. Gentleman will make a grant from time to time to this body which is under his control and is solely responsible to him. The board will not be responsible to the local authorities or even controlled by them. As I read the Clause, the local authorities will have no say in the matter whatever. Everything is to be done by the Secretary of State.
10.15 p.m.
This is a modest, fair, equitable, just—are more adjectives needed?—Amendment which seems so eminently reasonable that the Under-Secretary should spring up and say that she accepts it. To be frank, I cannot see a case against it. I have puzzled my mind over this—admittedly, I was not on the Standing Committee and did not, therefore, hear


all the argument—and it would seem that the Amendment should be welcomed by the Government.
My hon. Friends and I believe that the Secretary of State should say clearly what he intends to do, how often he will make grants and, in this connection, I believe that he should be responsible entirely for the financing of this. I understand that the board will cost a fair sum of money. Simply to say to the local authorities that they must pay for it but cannot give any instructions to it is going too far. In fact, everything will be determined by the Secretary of State and not the local authorities. In fact, even the advice the board will give will be given to the Secretary of State.
As I read the Clause, the local authorities do not enter into the matter until the question of payment arises; and then they must pay for it. As a local government elector of Edinburgh I should like to discuss the matter at municipal election times with my councillor, including the amount of money Edinburgh Corporation pays for the board. Despite this, it will have nothing to do with me because only the Secretary of State will be involved. As a ratepayer I am going to foot the bill. This is entirely wrong. My democratic rights as a citizen and ratepayer of Edinburgh are being taken from me by this dictatorial Government in a manner that does not stand examination for a moment.
I hope that, with these remarks, the Under-Secretary will spring to her feet and say that after the thought she has given to the matter—and she must have given it considerable thought—and in view of the moving speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East, she is happy to accept the Amendment.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lady Tweedsmuir): The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) has moved his Amendment persuasively, as he always does. It is with some regret, therefore, that I must inform him that I cannot accept it. However, I hope that the reasons I shall give will persuade him that there is some reason for allowing subsection (5) to stand without alteration. It is, as he rightly says, in a form which enables the Secretary of

State—enables, but does not place a duty on the Secretary of State—to make grants to the Board—

Mr. Willis: Why not?

Lady Tweedsmuir: That is just the point. As it is proposed to be amended, it would, of course, be an obligation on the Secretary of State. But the amount of the grant to be paid would still be in his discretion. To give an extreme example, a grant of only £l would fulfil the obligation. Therefore, as it is worded, the Amendment does not have any real effect and for that reason I cannot accept it.
There are other reasons. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East asked why an obligation should be placed on the education authorities to contribute but not on the Secretary of State. The reason is that the role of Parliament here in relation to the education authorities is quite different from its role in relation to the Government. We have, of course, no control over local authorities, except in so far as it is provided by Statute. In order to be sure that an education authority will contribute to the funds of the board it is necessary to write into the legislation a quite specific obligation—

Mr. Willis: But—

Lady Tweedsmuir: Perhaps I may be allowed to finish my point, and then the hon. Member might like to speak. On the other hand, even if we accept the Amendment, the Secretary of State would have to ask Parliament each year to find the grant to be made by him to the board, and the supply procedure gives hon. Members an annual opportunity to consider the amount of the grant.

Mr. Willis: Is not this really turning the thing upside down to say that the Secretary of State has no control over local authorities in certain spheres? Is it not a fact that the local authority has no powers outside those given by Parliament?

Lady Tweedsmuir: The fact is that by Statute we usually lay an obligation on local authorities, and subsection (5) as drafted is in the form which is quite usual in these circumstances. The normal practice is for the main legislation to, empower the Minister to pay grants, and


it gives him the statutory basis on which to ask for supply. Traditionally the House of Commons does not commit itself to giving supply for more than a year at a time, and the Parliamentary authority for the grants covered by the 1963–64 Estimates of the Scottish Education Department, which total about £22 million, is seen in Section 75 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1962. Exactly as in the subsection we are now discussing, it is worded in this form—"The Secretary of State may ….
It is true that we might have made the grants to the board under that Section and we could have left out subsection (5) altogether. We decided to include it to make our intention quite clear. As hon. Members will know, the 1962 Act is the master Statute. We thought it right to include his subsection in order to make clear the Clause as a whole. I hope, therefore, that the Committee will agree that this is in accordance with precedent.

Miss Margaret Herbison: The hon. Lady says that subsection (5) was put in to make clear the intention of the Government. We discussed the matter during the Committee stage, but we have no idea yet what proportion of the cost of running this board will be borne by the local authority and what proportion will be provided by the Secretary of State. Nothing that has been said tonight makes us feel that we have received any reassurance on that point. Can the hon. Lady give us that assurance?

Mr. G. M. Thomson: I hope that the Minister will give us more clarification. From the information we have had already, what we have here is a quite unjust imposition on Scottish local authorities. The present examination system which is to be transferred to the new board is paid for entirely by the central Government, or the Secretary of State. According to the original Financial Memorandum, it costs about £160,000 which at present is paid for entirely by the Secretary of State.
Under the board set up by the Bill it is estimated that the costs of the operation will be about £200,000. The major part of this will be met by contributions from the local education authorities. The only mention in the Financial

Memorandum of a contribution direct from the Secretary of State is £5,000. In the absence of information from the hon. Lady it is impossible for us to tell what proportion of the £200,000 is likely to be met by any increase in the general grant.
At the moment, we are left with a situation in which it is quite clear that the Government are passing off a responsibility they have carried far many years to the already overburdened shoulders of local authorities. Apart from the hon. Lady's legalisms, this Amendment would enable the Government to say that they accepted each year their share of the cost of the new board.

Mr. William Ross: The hon. Lady keeps disappointing us. She said that by Statute we lay obligations on the local authorities. Here we are making arrangements for the conduct of examinations. I do not know whether she realises it, but this very week the children in Scotland are sitting their examinations. Who is paying for them? The Secretary of State. But after this Bill goes through we are to have a new examinations board. Who will pay for that? The local authorities.
It is only because of the policy of the Government: that we require this Statute. The local authorities are to have no say on this board. The Government do not want them to have any say, for they are to have only two representatives out of about thirty-two members, although the Government find it convenient to make them pay up. But when it comes to the Government., what tenderness of language we find.
The Bill says:
The Secretary of State may from time to time…
There is no obligation on the Government to do anything. But until now, and I gather for another year, the Government have been paying, and the cost for last year was £160,000. It is a bit much to shuffle off the cost, even with grants:, on to the local authorities and then to suggest that this is what we always do by Statute. That is nonsense and unfair. The hon. Lady says that this will not mean very much, but I should like to see the Scottish Office putting £1 a year towards this Act and seeing just exactly what the reactions of


the Scottish local authorities would be to it or, indeed, of Scottish Members of Parliament. She has already told us what the Government propose to pay from time to time, and she reckoned it at about £5,000 per year. On her own argument there is no obligation on the Government to pay anything at all.
If it is her intention to pay £5,000 a year and she wants to make that intention clear, the way to do it is to change "may" to "shall" and "from time to time" to "annually". If she wants to put in some limitation in relation to payment for advice, in subsection (1,b), in respect of the services that will be rendered to the Secretary of State, she will have ample opportunity to do it elsewhere, but there is no logic in turning down our modest suggestion that she should go part of the way now by making clear her intention, to which she referred in Committee, to meet the obligation that the Secretary of State would pay £5,000 a year.
Our feeling is that the Government should pay far more than £5,000 a year. Indeed, we have another Amendment on the Paper—still very indefinite, for we are bound by the rules relating to the Report stage and all the rest—to ensure that if the contribution of the local authority is reduced, obviously it will automatically increase the contribution that will have to be made by the Secretary of State. I sincerely hope that the hon. Lady will undertake that obligation to consider this point.
10.30 p.m.
We have just had the local elections and the Tories did not do very well. I do not know what the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (The Earl of Dalkeith) is muttering. If he wants to make his maiden speech on education, I shall be delighted to give way. I know he is probably feeling very lonely in his isolated position. In Ayrshire the Tories lost. In my own constituency they lost control of Newmills and they lost two seats in Kilmarnock. They lost control in Ardrossan, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Bute and North Ayrshire (Sir F. Maclean), for all his struggles, and education had a lot to do with this. I am sure that the knowledge that the Government were bilking in respect of this subsection had a lot to

do with it, because this is the whole idea of the Conservative Government in relation to many of the services which they share with the local authorities. The local authorities are really their agents.
Here is a service, which is an external examination, which has nothing to do with the local authority, and indeed which is probably a way of judging, in respect of certain sections of our education, whether the standard of education is adequate. That is an obligation which is placed by Parliament not on the local authority but on the Secretary of State. It is his responsibility to see that the standard of education is right, and part of that proceeding is the external examination. The local authorities dare not have anything to do with it, because they would be interfering with the secret processes in the proper conduct of the examination. That is why the Department of Education has had it for all these years. That is why, when they are shifting the responsibility in relation to the physical aspects of it, they are shifting it not to the local authorities but to the board, dominated by scholastics, entirely independent—
a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal".
But although the obligation with respect to the standard of education rests with the Secretary of State, he is not going to pay. Although the conduct of examinations is placed in the hands of the board, it is not going to pay. The money is to be paid by the ratepayers. No wonder the ratepayers of Scotland are getting rather sick of the Tory tricks. The hon. Lady the Under-Secretary has a chance to make good the position by accepting this Amendment and to shoulder, on behalf of the Government and of the Scottish Office, a continuing obligation for a service which they have provided and paid for since the "Highers" were established a long time ago.

Mr. Willis: I am very dissatisfied. This is a scandalous situation. The noble Lady's argument in reply amounted to this. First, the Amendment is not quite correctly worded. At that point, I hoped that she would say that the Government nevertheless accepted it in principle and would attend to the wording in another place. But she went on to say that, if we put these words into the Bill, they


still would not make any difference because the Secretary of State might just make a nominal grant of £1 a year.
As I understood it, the great benefit under this Clause is that, as a result of a grant being made even of only £1, £20 or £50, we should have the right to discuss the matter on the Floor of the House. Of course, we should have the right to discuss it. If it were put in the Bill, we should then have a guarantee that we should be able to discuss it every year, but now we shall have no guarantee that we shall ever discuss it again before the year 2000. With even £1 a year grant, we should have an opportunity to tell the Government what a crowd of "stinkers" we think they are, but, as it is now worded, we probably shall not have the opportunity until the year 2000.
I did not know what were the sums involved, but, now that I have heard that this is to cost £200,000 and that the Government think that they might make a grant of £5,000, I am staggered. What would the electors of Scotland think if they knew? My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) said that this subsection has probably led to the defeat of the Tories in Scotland. I am sure that, if the Scottish electors had known that the Government were to offer the meagre pittance of £5,000 out of £200,000, they would have swept the Tories out of every town council in the land. Even in Edinburgh we should have won a big majority because Edinburgh folk are very careful with their money. This is what the Tories win their elections on, telling people what good managers they are. It is a preposterous situation, and I feel that we should fight further on this Amendment.
I do not know whether it is an annual cost. Is it £200.000 a year, out of which the local authorities will find £195,000? Is the Government's £5,000 to be an annual grant? The local authorities have practically nothing to do with this body, for no fewer than four-fifths of the members are to be appointed by the Secretary of State.
This attitude towards local authorities in Scotland is most alarming. Is this what the Government mean by strengthening local democracy? I have been reading the Progressives' literature during the municipal elections and I have not found in it anything about whittling

down the powers of local authorities and robbing them of power. On the contrary, I read how the Progressives were anxious to strengthen local democracy and make it a reality and take it out of the grip of Whitehall. I was almost persuaded to vote for them on the basis of those cries—almost. I think about these things when people say them and I weigh them up. Talk about the man in Whitehall knowing best! In this case he not only knows best but does everything—appoints the members, receives their reports, gives them instructions, and lets the local authorities pay. This is most unreasonable and I hope that the hon. Lady will think about it again.
The hon. Lady is not unintelligent. I have always attributed a great deal of intelligence to her. I have always attributed to her a desire to make democracy work. I listened with great interest to some of the speeches which she used to make from the third bench above the Gangway and I was always intrigued by them. I thought that she was progressively minded and anxious to confer power on local authorities and to see that they functioned well and were strengthened and were made vital living democracies which were an example to the world. Instead, she has created a tin. pot dictator in St. Andrew's House and the local authorities are to pay for the privilege of creating him. This is wrong. I ask the hon. Lady to tear up the brief which she has been given and ignore the people in the Officials' Box. If she does, I am sure that she will come to a different conclusion from that which she has now reached.
I ask her whether even at this late stage she can do better than she has done. I cannot give her any marks at all so far. I hope that she will apply her mind to this matter and do justice to the argument which we have advanced and reconsider this matter before the Bill goes to another place to see whether something can be done to give a greater degree of assurance to local authorities.

10.45 p.m.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I think that you will agree, Sir Robert, that of all hon. Members, those representing Scottish constituencies have an absolutely fascinating skill about putting everything in order. We have had a most interesting debate on the local elections. I shall return to the Amendment.

Mr. Archie Manuel: On a point of order. Was the hon. Lady slighting the Chair, Sir Robert, when she said that she would return to the Amendment and that we had really been discussing local elections? I think that she should be pulled to order. In Scottish debates we are very careful to uphold the Chair.

The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Robed Grimston): I did not think that the hon. Lady was slighting the Chair, because she alluded first to the skill of hon. Members in keeping in order.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I did not wish to pursue the question of the local elections.

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Lady Tweedsmuir: Not for the reasons hon. Members opposite might think. I recognise that that there are some lion. Members present who were not members of the Standing Committee, and who therefore may not perhaps be aware of the financial contribution which is required from the local authorities on this question, and the contribution which it is intended the Secretary of State shall make towards these expenses. If, therefore, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) will allow me to do so, I should like to give the details of the exact expenses involved, because I think that the hon. Gentleman is under a considerable misapprehension if he thinks that it is only £5,000.
As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) said, there will be a preparatory stage after the board has been appointed and before it first conducts the examination for the Scottish certificate. This period will last for about twelve months, and during this time the board has to create the organisation and appoint its staff. It is my right hon. Friend's intention to ask Parliament to vote grants to the board to cover the whole of its expenses during this preparatory period. The Scottish Education Department's estimate for 1963–64 includes £20,000 for this preparatory period.
Once the board is in full operation it is the intention that grants should be voted under subsection (5) to meet the cost of the board's advisory functions, and that the education authorities should be required to make contributions under

subsection (4) to meet the cost of the board's executive functions and the running of the examinations. The expenditure incurred by the education authorities will automatically be relevant for general grant, and it is our intention that the amount to be paid to general grant each year in this respect will be not less than the full amount of the first year's contributions. The effect will be that the sum ultimately to be met from local rates—which I think was the point stressed by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson)—will be no more than a fraction of the extra cost compared with the first year of running the board.
The hon. Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) particularly asked for figures in relation to this question. We cannot with complete accuracy state what the board's expenses will be, but we estimate that the budget in the first operational year might be about £200,000. The Secretary of State will contribute perhaps £5,000, and the education authorities perhaps £195,000, but—and this is the point in reply to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East—the general grant for that year would also have £195,000 added to it, so that in the first year the rates would bear none of the cost.
Suppose that in the second year the board's budget went up by 5 per cent., say, £10,000. The contributions obviously would also have to rise. The general grant would be increased on the usual proportionate basis, and thus about £4,000 of the total expenditure would fall on the rates and the remainder on the Exchequer. If expenses continue to rise, for example by 5 per cent. each year, by the mid-seventies the board's budget might be about £300,000, and of this about £40,000 would be found from local rates throughout Scotland, and £260,000 from national taxation.
I therefore suggest to hon. Gentlemen who are anxious about subsection (5) that the total which would come from the rates for this purpose of the Examination Board would be very small in relation to the large sums spent on education throughout Scotland. And, quite apart from that, as I said earlier to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East, Section 75 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1962, uses the same form of words. It says that the Secretary of State "may",


and for that reason I trust that the hon. Gentleman will consider withdrawing his Amendment.

Mr. Bruce Milian: The figures of the burden to be borne by local authorities which the noble Lady has just given are quite different from what she said in Committee upstairs. Although I have not the Official Report of the Committee with me, I remember raising the matter. In the Standing Committee it seemed to be admitted that local authorities would pay approximately 40 per cent. of the expenses, on the noble Lady's figures She is saying something entirely different now. Has something happened since, or was the noble Lady misinformed when she spoke in Standing Committee?

Lady Tweedsmuir: I am certain that my figures are exactly the same. I have exactly the same figures before me now. I made it perfectly clear that the whole of the board's expenses would be paid in the first year and that, after that, grant would be payable at a rate of 60 per cent. on the additional cost—the proportion from the local rates being 40 per cent.—and the total cost, even if we take it eleven years hence with increased expenses as I estimated to the Committee just now, would be a very small proportion indeed of the total spent on education in Scotland.

Mr. Ross: The noble Lady cannot slip away with that one. This is a fixation on the 1970s. We have even reached the 1980s and to a position where there was a sum of £300,000 being spent and somehow or other 40 per cent. of £301000 became £40,000. Would the noble Lady like to explain that wee bit of arithmetic, or will she submit her calculations to the new council and see how many marks she will obtain? As an ex-teacher I shall not give her any marks at all.
The noble Lady has made wonderful promises about what will happen under general grant. Have we already got the general grant for next year? It has been passed through the House of Commons. Therefore, the noble Lady is telling us now that she will introduce a supplementary order to give the benefit of an additional general grant to the local

authorities. She has also told us what we shall have in general grant somewhere about the year 1979 in respect of one thing, but this is one of the features of the general grant about which we just do not know. A general grant is one block grant and nothing is identifiable, and we have drawn attention to the fact that the proportion in respect of general grant was coming down rather than going up. The noble Lady's figures are more than a bit haywire, but it is late at night and she is on the Government Front Bench alone with no support from any other Scottish Minister. We quite understand that the Secretary of State for Scotland is worn out after his efforts earlier today. He has probably been taken to hospital. The noble Lady can do better arithmetic. I assure her that 40 per cent:, of £300,000 is not as low as she makes out.

Mr. Milian: I am sorry to pursue the point. I hope that the noble Lady is being given the OFFICIAL REPORT reference now. She did not challenge the figures which I gave in Standing Committee and which I took from the Financial Memorandum. If I understood the noble Lady correctly this evening, she was saying that the basic £200,000 expenses of the board were to be borne by the Government, and the local authorities would pay almost 40 per cent, of any additional expenses coming in future years but, with respect, this is not the argument which the noble Lady used in Standing Committee or, if it was, she put it with conspicuous lack of clarity.
I thought that it was generally accepted in Committee upstairs that 40 per cent. of the general expenses were to be born by the local authority, and not 40 per cent. of expenses additional to the expenses in the first year. Can we be absolutely clear that that is not the position and that the Government have changed their mind? If so, and if they are being more generous towards local authorities, we want to give them credit. But we will not give them credit if the Under-Secretary continues to pretend that what she is saying is exactly what she said in Committee upstairs.

Amendment negatived.

Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.

New Clause.—(BURSARIES FOR CHILDREN AT SPECIAL SCHOOLS.)

The power of an education authority to grant bursaries to, and otherwise defray the expenses of, persons over school age shall extend to children over the age of fifteen who are receiving special educational treatment in accordance with section 64 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1962, notwithstanding that under section 32(4) of that Act they are deemed to be of school age.—[Mr. Lawson.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. George Lawson: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

The Deputy-Chairman (Sir Robert Grimston): I think that it would be convenient for the Committee to discuss at the same time the Amendment to the Title, in line 11, after "thereof", insert:
to provide for the making of payments by education authorities in respect of persons receiving special educational treatment".

Mr. Lawson: That will be convenient.
The proposed new Clause is on the Order Paper largely because of the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) who, unfortunately, is not able to be here tonight. He is engaged on Government business elsewhere. I am sure that all hon. Members would have been delighted had he been here to argue the case. The Under-Secretary may recall that on 24th April last my hon. Friend the Member for Maryhill asked her right hon. Friend:
… if he is aware that children attending school beyond the statutory age limit are eligible for bursaries, whereas children attending special schools to the age of 16 years are not so eligible; and if he will now seek to amend Section 32(4) of the Education (Scotland) Act so as to rectify this anomaly.
The Secretary of State replied:
I appreciate that older children attending special schools are not eligible for higher school bursaries, and this question will be looked at when there is a suitable opportunity for amending legislation.
As a result of that Answer, my hon. Friend pressed the matter further and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Millan) asked:
Why can we not deal with this in the Scottish Education Bill which is at present going through this House? Could we not insert something in that Bill?

The right hon. Gentleman, replying further to my hon. Friend the Member for Maryhill, said:
The problem is that this would have to be dealt with on a United Kingdom basis and not on a Scottish basis.… the problem is exactly the same in both countries. I think it would be resented and would be unfair to England if we legislated on a separate basis.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th April 1963: Vol. 676, c. 211.]
I find this a rather strange argument coming from the Secretary of State. I would say the same of the representative of any Government. It has been the regular practice to legislate for Scotland as distinct from England and Wales. The reverse is equally true. A substantial amount of credit is taken for the fact that there are differences in the laws of both countries. A large part of the argument for the continuation of a separate Scottish Office—indeed, the very existence of the right hon. Gentleman, and the noble Lady acting in her present capacity—is that there is separate legislation.
To bring the argument the right hon. Gentleman used as one to justify the failure and refusal on the part of the Government to act now—to remove an anomaly which it is admitted exists—seems nonsense. There are many examples of the differences in the legislation between the two countries. For example, there is the problem of inheritance for women in Scotland. This is totally difference from the law for women in England and Wales.
This matter has been raised by many of my hon. Friends. Recently my hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) demanded an opportunity to bring the law of Scotland into line with the law of England and Wales in regard to intestacy. It has not been provided. Recently we passed the Licensing (Scotland) Act. Some of us wanted to go a little further than the Government in bringing our law closer into line with English law on that subject.
11.0 p.m.
So we have a situation in which differences exist. Frequently, the differences in one country are utilised in order to bring the law of the other country into line. For instance, the law of capital punishment in England and Wales was substantially altered to bring it into line with Scottish law, which was considered


to be better. So we are entitled to argue that this change we propose—a change which the Secretary of State has himself said is desirable—should be made.
The law on this is absurd. I cannot understand how it came about unless by some oversight. The existing position is that if a child stays on at school after the statutory school leaving age of 15, the local authority may make a grant towards him maintenance. On the other hand, if a retarded child is compulsorily kept on for a year by the local education authority because he needs special educational treatment, he will be considered not to be above school leaving age. This means that the local authority is debarred from making a grant for his maintenance because it cannot make a grant in respect of a child who is not above school leaving age.
Thus there is the strange position that a handicapped child who is considered by the education authority o need an extra year at school cannot get a grant or bursary from the local authority. We all appreciate that these grants or bursaries would be subject to a means test, so there is no question of handing out money in large sums unnecessarily. Undoubtedly there are cases of hardship. It was such a case that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill had in mind when be put this Clause down.
It could not originally have been intended that the handicapped child should be penalised. We must surely agree that, above all other children, such a child requires special care, and if that special care can be obtained with money, it should be obtained. The handicapped child even more than the bright child should have that help. In all probability, the parents of the handicapped child even more than the parents of the bright child should he helped, yet they and their child are discriminated against under existing law.
We have here an opportunity to rectify that anomaly, and if that means that the Scottish law will be out of step with the English and Welsh law, I am sure that our English and Welsh colleagues on both sides of the Committee will not begrudge this little change but will insist speedily on making a similar change. The opportunity is here by accepting the new Clause. It may not be correctly

worded, but we have no objection to it being redrafted, provided that it meets our wishes. It would make a small but valuable change, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will accept it.

Miss Herbison: I wish to support the new Clause which my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) moved so excellently He dealt with the Minister's answers to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan). I hope that the Under-Secretary will not tell us in her reply that perhaps this case is different from the examples which my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell gave when he showed the differences between Scottish and English legislation. I hope that she will not say that if this were accepted Scotland would get more than her fair share from the Treasury for education, for I am certain that my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell is right in saying that if this is accepted for Scottish children and parents, the English hon. Members on both sides of the Committee would be ready at any time—ten o'clock or midnight—to pass a simple amending Bill.
We are concerned about children who are physically or mentally handicapped, and sometimes both. They are often a cause of great concern to their parents. Not only do they remain at school compulsorily until they are 16 but their parents fully realise that possibly such a child may never be able to earn. Some will be able to earn but many will not. I know of parents who in such a position are denying themselves continually in order to make some financial provision, no matter how small or limited, for the future of these children. In cases like this, when they become 15 years of age they should be eligible for a bursary in exactly the same way a s those children who have all their faculties. and whose parents do not have to worry very much about their future provision.
Why do we make these grants after a child has reached 15 years of age? One reason is to encourage young people to remain at school. The noble Lady may say that since it is compulsory for the others to stay until they are 16 years of age, the question of encouragement does not arise. That is true. But we also make grants in order that the parents of these children can be helped to maintain


them when they stay on at school. Very often mentally handicapped children need far more clothing than those who are normal. I have examples of that in my village and my constituency. The cost of clothing some of these children is often much higher than is the case with normal children.
I am sure that the noble Lady is interested in these matters, and I hope that she will be able to tell us tonight that even if the Clause cannot be accepted as at present worded, when the Bill goes to another place the provision that we are asking for tonight will be inserted.

Mr. Cyril Bence: I support the Clause because I feel strongly about the division which exists between the two types of children who are being educated. We have given bursaries and rewards to parents to support children for a long time, the main reason being that we need as many educated people as possible to sustain our society and help us to maintain our position in the world, both culturally an economically. Grants and bursaries can always be justified for the parents of normal children.
But I want as many children as possible to be able to take advantage of opportunities afforded by technical education. I want to see the State, with the support of parents, providing as much education as possible, not only for the development of character which this ensures but because of the contribution it enables these young persons to make to society later on. The fundamental purpose of education is not to confer a great blessing on society; it is to confer qualities of character upon the individual who is receiving education.
Ever since I was at school it has seemed to me that those who attend grammar school or secondary school, and who have all their faculties, which can be developed through our scholastic system, are able to make a contribution to society and should therefore be assisted by bursaries. But here we are dealing with the handicapped child. He has as much right to take advantage of education and to develop his character and personality and other qualities to the best of his capacity, although when

he has done so he can contribute nothing to the State or to society. To my mind, that fact does not enter into the reckoning.
In our Christian society we are prepared to give aid to parents whose children can afterwards make a contribution to society: should not we also help the parents of those other children who, because of natural forces, are less able? Are not they, as human souls, just as entitled to develop their personalities and characters? Yet we seem to say that, because a child can make no contribution to society, we shall not give him or her a bursary. For all my life I have thought this to be a terrible thing in a Christian society. There is no hon. Member who has a family of children who would not make a greater contribution to the weakest child of the family rather than to the strongest despite the fact that it is the strongest who can make the largest contribution back to the family and, indirectly, to society as a whole.
I feel very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) for having put down this proposed new Clause. I thought that here was an opportunity to say something which I have wanted to say all my life and that here, too, was an opportunity for the Government to help children who are handicapped. I hope that the Government will accept this new Clause because it is one of the most desirable suggestions made in the House of Commons since I have been a Member.

11.15 p.m.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) is unable to be present tonight because I know that he takes a great interest in this problem. At the same time, I am grateful for the fact that his hon. Friend, the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) has moved the Motion in his stead. I should like to say that I am grateful for the evident sympathy expressed by the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) and the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence).
The real trouble about accepting this Clause is that it creates other difficulties. It is not so much a question of the legislation for the whole of Britain, which


is an argument which has been put forward. At first sight, it would seem unfair that one child should be able to have a bursary at the age of 15 years while the other child, because he or she is a pupil at a special school, cannot receive one before the age of 16 years. But, as I have said, if we accepted this new Clause we should crate other problems.
I ask the House to consider this point by going over the present position. A child attending an ordinary school must receive full-time education until a fixed day following the fifteenth birthday and that means that the child can leave school, if he so wishes, somewhere between 15 and 15½, depending on the date of the birthday. A child who is handicapped physically or mentally and who, therefore, is educated in a special school, must remain at school until after his or her sixteenth birthday. This has always been the case, and the gap between those who have bursaries and those who do not, used to be wider. The period used to be two years, and not one. Until 1947, when the school leaving age was 14 years for most children, the age for the special school child was 16—the same as now.
Under the Education Act at present the gap is narrowed and will be closed when the school leaving age is raised to 16 years. This is a reform to which the Government are committed and which we would clearly like to undertake but which we cannot immediately because of the shortage of teachers.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: When is the hon. Lady going to tell us something about the implementation of the Crowther Report?

Lady Tweedsmuir: Not on this new Clause. The new Clause is concerned with allowances for school pupils, known in Scotland as higher school bursaries. Therefore. I ask the Committee to consider for a moment the reason for making these allowances. If they were intended simply as a general family subvention in aid of a child's maintenance, to he given without an educational test, we would not expect them to be paid by education authorities. It would be much easier and more logical to increase family allowances at the appropriate stage. But this is not the object of the bursaries.

Their purpose is set out very clearly in Section 49(2) of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1962. Although this is a recent Act, the origin of bursaries is very much older.
Higher school bursaries are meant to help pupils to take advantage of educational facilities of which they might not take advantage if some financial assistance were not given. They are simply a means—and this was recognised by the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North—of encouraging continued attendance at school by those whose ability justifies it but for whom attendance is voluntary. Therefore, they are not awarded to a pupil so long as he or she is under an obligation to attend school.
If the new Clause were accepted we would be creating another difficulty, namely that for most children higher school bursaries would not be paid while they had to attend school, while special school pupils would be eligible for bursaries during the last year of their compulsory attendance. Therefore, I suggest that we would be creating more difficulties than we have already. What we would do would be to substitute a new criterion, of age, for the present one of voluntary attendance.
It is for this reason that I feel that at this advanced stage of the Bill, without a great deal of careful thought and consultation to see if there is another way of getting round the difficulty, I cannot accept the proposed Clause, although I understand perfectly the reasons for it having been moved.

Mr. Willis: Having heard the hon. Lady's reply, I am profoundly disappointed. When she spoke about the special difficulties that would be created, I thought, Now we shall hear some really effective reasons why this cannot be done ", instead of which the reasons which we have been given seem to me to be quite trifling. The reason simply is that we shall be instituting a new criterion, of age, instead of basing the arrangement on taking advantage voluntarily of higher education.
Suppose we did this. Who would object? What difficulties would arise? Who are the people who would be storming the Edinburgh City Chambers or the town council meetings to demand that


this unfair practice should cease at once? I do not know of anybody. I cannot think of a single soul who would object. I do not think letters would be sent to Members of Pariament about the unfairness because wee Johnnie, who is at a special school, has got a bursary at the age of 15 instead of 16, as hitherto, thus putting him on an equal footing with another boy who is also 15 but has got all his faculties and is likely to be able to do quite well for himself when he leaves school. Who would object? When the question is put simply, the absurdity of the argument is seen at once.
Very few people would follow the rather involved argument about substituting a new criterion of age instead of voluntary attendance for higher education. It is the most trifling argument for refusing something which would appeal to the human sentiments of almost every citizen. I should expect it to appeal even to hon. Members opposite, but, apparently, they are not interested in education, and they do not take a very great interest in the children at special schools. It is a matter of no concern to the Scottish Tory Party, although, of course, most people would wish to be very kindly disposed to the parents of these children, being only too thankful that they did not have the same troubles.
The noble Lady's other curious argument was that it will all be put right when the school leaving age is raised, but she could not say when that would be done. We are off again into the 'seventies—or even the 'eighties or 'nineties. But if it is to be put right swiftly, the difficulties will last for only a very short time. If the immense difficulties which the noble Lady sees are to last for only a year or two, is it suggested that we should not help those who have the misfortune to be backward or who, for other reasons, need to be at special schools?
The answer is, of course, to raise the school leaving age very soon. If the Government are at all serious in their desire to raise the school leaving age, and they do it as soon as possible, there is nothing in the noble Lady's argument about the difficulties which the new Clause would create. If there were a feeling of dissatisfaction, it would be considerably mitigated if the noble Lady

could say that the problem would last for only a few months until the school leaving age was raised.
Those were her only two arguments; I do not think there was another. They are trifling arguments, and it would be deplorable if the Committee were to reject a new Clause with such an excellent object on such flimsy grounds. We are to refuse to do the right thing because there may be certain administrative difficulties. That is one of the cruellest arguments I have heard for a long time.
11.30 p.m.
At least the hon. Lady should give more thought to this new Clause to see whether these arrangements cannot be made for this special category of children. It is not as though we were dealing with all children. We are dealing with only a comparatively small minority, a most deserving minority. Again I hope that the hon. Lady will tear up her notes. We are suffering too much from this sort of stuff. It is conscientiously prepared and I have no criticism of it on that ground, but we should judge these issues for ourselves.

Miss Herbison: I am extremely disappointed by the hon. Lady's reply. I felt that on this new Clause at least we would get something from the Government. It is the job of her officials to regard this as a matter of education, but in this case they have gone to the bottom of the barrel to find reasons for rejecting our proposal.
I thought that I might be told that the reason for the bursary after 15 was to encourage children to stay at school. The hon. Lady said that things were not so bad now and that the gap used to be two years and was now only one because of the raising of the school leaving age to 15 and that it was Government policy to raise it to 16, so that there would be no gap at all. But that does not mean that any child will get more, but only that grants will then not begin until 16.
I wondered whether the hon. Lady realised that when she was reading her brief. Even if it did not mean that, I would not be impressed by that argument. In 1918, the intention to raise the school leaving age to 15 was put on the Statute Book, but although we had Tory Governments, or their equivalent, from then until 1945, the school leaving


age was not raised to 15 in those years. If we get policies for the 1980s and not the 1970s, there may be some chance, if hon. Gentlemen opposite are still in power, that it will be raised to 16. I have the gravest suspicion that the hon. Lady's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) was the real reason for the rejection of the new Clause—that because England does not have this provision, we cannot have it.
But if the real reason is that we must keep this bursary really as a weapon to keep children at school, then the fact that this matter had been previously raised in the House ought to have made the Secretary of State and the hon. Lady think about how help could be given to disabled children aged between 15 and 16, because when these children reach the age of 16 their parents can apply to the National Assistance Board for National Assistance in respect of these children, and this will be granted irrespective of the income of the parents.
We have our policy ready to deal with this problem. It may be that the hon. Lady will not have very much time in which to give this matter serious consideration. We shall do away with the means test which is at present applied in respect of these children. We shall increase family allowances according to the age of the child concerned. 'I here will then be no argument to advance against our giving handicapped children between the ages of 15 and 16 the help that they are not getting at the moment. The Government should accept the new Clause as a stop-gap measure while they consider the wider questions of what can be done to help these people.

Mr. Dalyell: The Under-Secretary of State made a highly significant statement. It is given as a reason for not accepting the new Clause that the school leaving age will soon be raised. If the noble Lady wishes to deny that, perhaps she will do so now.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I think that the hon. Gentleman was not listening as closely as he usually does. I said that the anomaly, if it is one, would be removed when the school leaving age was raised, but the real reason I gave was that the purpose of bursaries was to try to persuade people to stay cn after the compulsory attendance at school.

Mr. Dalyell: By innuendo the noble Lady is suggesting that it is hoped that the school leaving age will be raised soon. If it were a matter of one or two years, I would accept that as reasonable, but this sort of argument comes ill from a Government who have not made any decision on Sir Geoffrey Crowther's recommendations. If the Government had made a decision on the Crowther Report one could have accepted the arguments put forward by the hon. Lady tonight, but it is little less than fraudulent to put forward this kind of argument without telling us whether any decision has been made on the Crowther recommendations.
When will the Government make up their mind about what they are going to do? They have very little time in which to do this, not so much on political grounds, but on educational grounds, because of the "bulge", and so on. I hope that we can have an answer from a Minister who speaks not only on behalf of Scotland but sometimes on behalf of the Ministry of Education in England.

Mr. James Dempsey: According to the noble Lady's logic, the raising of the school leaving age will make matters worse, because it will eliminate those between 15 and 16 who receive bursaries. The noble Lady made it clear that the purpose of a bursary was to induce students to stay on at school beyond the compulsory school leaving age.
Is the noble Lady absolutely sure that there are authorities in Scotland which do not award bursaries within the compulsory school leaving age? Is she satisfied that there are authorities which are not awarding bursaries at 14 to 15 years of age? We have a right to some information on this sort of question. This view has been expressed in education circles. Is it right or wrong? I should be glad if the noble Lady would clarify the point when she replies.

Mr. William Small: I recognise some of the noble Lady's difficulties. They have been experienced by local authorities as well. A local authority should be responsible in toto for its quota of those who require special educational treatment and there should be a subvention from the Ministry of Labour which would be a national charge. This approach might well be examined. The argument about special


treatment turns on the question of educational benefit and the incentive to go on, and the determination whether a child, though not highly educated, is trainable. There has been a long existing gap in this respect. A Ministry of Labour agency should bear the burden when a child is prevented from leaving school at 15. I am not, however, advocating that children should leave school at an early age to become earners and I support the principle embodied in the Clause.

Mr. Bence: I am disappointed with the noble Lady's reply to the speeches made on the Clause from this side of the Committee. I have a feeling that perhaps she is sympathetic to the purpose of the Clause but has been overridden by Whitehall bureaucrats. One often has the feeling that if a Minister who is replying to a point had real charge of affairs the reply to a debate might be different. One sometimes feels that there is a machine behind a Minister which forbids the acceptance of certain propositions.
This is the third or fourth occasion in my experience when I have come into the Chamber at 10.15 and found the House or Committee dealing with Scottish business. This is an important new Clause and if more Scottish Conservative Members were playing their part in the debate I could stay here all night.

Mr. Willis: We will.

Mr. Bence: This important Scottish Measure has been tacked on at the end of the day's business. A number of Scottish Members present are deeply interested in the subject matter but unfortunately debate must come entirely from this side of the Committee.

Mr. Willis: My hon. Friend should not be silly. He should know that hon. Members opposite are not interested in education.

11.45 p.m.

Mr. Bence: My hon. Friend may be right. Nevertheless, had this business been taken within a reasonable working day I am sure that hon. Members opposite would have been interested in it.

Mr. Ross: Not at all.

Mr. Willis: Is my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr.

Bence) not aware that a completely nonpolitical Bill is at present before the Scottish Grand Committee and that we still cannot get a contribution from hon. Members opposite?

Mr. Bence: My hon. Friend should appreciate that many hon. Members opposite find far more interesting things to do after the hour of ten o'clock than debating education in this Committee.

Mr. Ross: Resulting in the fact that they cannot get to the Scottish Standing Committee at 10.30 a.m. to give the Government a quorum.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

The Chairman: Order. I hope that the hon. Member will not stray further than necessary from the new Clause we are now debating.

Mr. Bence: I apologise, Sir William. I was merely pointing out that this sort of thing is happening far too often. Important matters are tacked on at the end of the day. It is now 11.45 p.m. and I am sure that my hon. Friends are able to adduce a great many more persuasive arguments in an endeavour to get the noble Lady to accept the new Clause. Indeed, I hope that my hon. Friends will persist in trying to persuade her. If the noble Lady continues to send her Parliamentary Private Secretary with messages to and from the Front Bench we may get somewhere.

Mr. Ross: I had hoped that the noble Lady would change her mind, or at least provide us with a more satisfactory explanation. The argument of her right hon. Friend that something could not be done for Scotland alone because the same thing arises in England and Wales is not good enough. I admit that the noble Lady did not say that. It was her right hon. Friend—and since he is a Cabinet Minister we would not expect him to know, anyway.
We still have industrial derating in Scotland. It does not exist in England. We will have it for another five years. An hour or so ago the Secretary of State boasted that in Scotland the question of community welfare would be tackled in a totally different way from the course adopted by the Minister of Health. Thank heaven for that.
The noble Lady says that she cannot accept the new Clause because this business is not a matter for education. I agree with her about that, but the new Clause has been on the Order Paper for a long time. My hon. Friends have asked Questions on the subject. In any case, this is, perhaps, not the most serious part of the problem. A serious aspect is the question of handicapped children being able to get to school. Parents with handicapped children are tremendously relieved when the bus calls to take them for training. It means that the education authority has decided that their children will benefit from such training.
Obviously there is an anomaly here. We know that some children who stay on do not benefit, just as we know that many who would have liked to stay on but could not would have benefited. But even the slightest benefit to handicapped children is far greater than the benefit to an ordinary child in staying on longer.
If there is hardship, then it should be met even by stretching the education system. But if the hon. Lady really feels that it cannot be done this way because it will break legal precedence and offend statutory proprieties, then surely she can still give a little more satisfactory answer than the terrible one she delivered, which was, "It will he all right when Mr. Macmillan pedals into the 1970s." [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] I was talking about Kirkpatrick Macmillan. We are told that the school leaving age will be raised to 16 and then this anomaly will disappear.

Mr. Willis: For the enlightenment of hon. Members who are following my hon. Friend's penetrating remarks will he explain his reference to Mr. Macmillan?

Mr. Ross: Kirkpatrick Macmillan came from Dumfries and invented the bicycle. Hence my use of the word "pedaling".
We are told that when the leaving age goes up to 16 the obligation will start after that age. According to the hon. Lady, there will then be no anomaly because no one will get anything. The serious thing is the condition of these children. We have to do at least two things: speed up the provision of special schools and end the anomaly either in this or some other way. I should like to

hear the hon. Lady at least express some sympathy with our intentions and her aim to let her right hon. Friend know how we feel.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I want first to answer one or two specific questions which were put to me. The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) asked whether I would make an announcement tonight about the Crowther Report. I do not think that it would be suitable to do so on this new Clause, and in addition, as he knows, the Crowther Report applies to England and Wales.

Mr. Dalyell: Why did the hon. Lady use that argument?

Lady Tweedsmuir: I do not think the hon. Member could have listened, because I did not mention the Crowther Report at any time.
The hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) asked whether I was sure that no local authority was paying a bursary which ought not to be doing so. It would be illegal for them to give a bursary to any child who was attending school compulsorily. To my knowledge, no local authority is doing this. He is quite right, as is the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), in saying that if the school leaving age were raised to 16 the obligation to pay any bursaries to children under that age who were compulsorily attending school would cease. The only result would be that all these children, whether handicapped or not, would be in the same position.
I appreciate the feeling which has been expressed by every hon. Member and by the hon. Lady who have spoken on the subject, but the hon. Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) and the hon. Member for Kilmarnock put their finger on the point, which the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) also recognised—that these bursaries are educational inducements, and the question therefore is whether there is any other way in which this problem could be dealt with at this time.
I am convinced that I could not accept the new Clause, for the reasons which I have already given. I will, however, certainly convey the feelings of all hon. Members to my right lion. Friend. I doubt whether anything can be done within the educational field.


but we will see whether it is possible to do anything in any other way. It is a great problem. It has evidently been going on for many years. I looked up the previous debates on the subject. or at any rate those which I could find, before I came to the Committee. I find that the subject was first raised in 1956, when it was pointed out that the bursaries are for this particular educational reason. As far as I could see in the time available, the question was not raised by hon. Members from either side of the Border when the 1962 Bill was passing through the House, although that Bill applied to bursaries. There must therefore have been a certain amount of recognition by the House that while there was a definite problem, it could not or should not be dealt with by these means. I recognise the problem and will convey the feelings of hon. Members to the Secretary of State, but I cannot accept the Clause.

Mr. Ross: I do not like to press the point, but does the Secretary of State know that we are discussing education tonight? Scottish education? When he was asked a Question on the Floor of the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) he said,
I appreciate that older children attending special schools are not eligible for higher school bursaries, and this question will be looked at when there is a suitable opportunity for amending legislation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th April, 1963; Vol. 676, c. 2111
Here we have amending legislation. Where is the Secretary of State? I am serious about this. I see no reason why he is not here to discuss a matter to which he addressed himself and in relation to which he gave a promise on the Floor on 24th April, 1963. Has the hon. Lady some special information as to why her right hon. Friend is unable to be here? He was here at 10 p.m. because we heard him complete a rather miserable speech. In that we were discussing education, and in that there has been on the Order Paper a new Clause dealing with a problem which he said could be dealt with when we had suitable amending legislation, it is surprising that when we have this suitable legislation he is not here. We fully appreciate the noble Lady's position. She is only one of the Under-Secretaries, and she is bereft of

power. I am only sorry that we shall get no satisfaction out of this debate, but will have just another instance of the way in which the Secretary of State neglects his duties in this House.

12 m.

Mr. Willis: I do not wish to detain the Committee, having been in the House since half-past ten this morning, and since it is now midnight, but I feel compelled to enter once again into the debate on this important matter. I want to point out the difficulties under which we are labouring. It is obvious from what the hon. Lady said that she has no power to do anything on her own. This raises the whole question of the reason why we are here, arguing about matters in respect of which she cannot make a decision but has to tell us that she will convey what we have said to her right hon. Friend.
This puts the Committee in a difficult position. I do not know whether my interpretation is correct, or whether the hon. Lady does in fact have power to accept the new Clause if she feels that it is a good one. From what she said she apparently cannot do so. In that case I wonder whether the few remarks I want to make will be of any use.
The hon. Lady pointed out that my hon. Friends had referred to the real difficulties that arose out of the fact that bursaries were bribes to parents to let their children obtain further education. I thought that that was the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small). I do not accept that argument, nor the argument that this is not an educational matter. Although the bursary might tend to induce people to take advantage of further education it does not seem to me that it is a bribe for this purpose. From what the hon. Lady said it appeared that she was arguing that this was a bribe, but I think that it is given to enable parents to keep their children at school a little longer. It might be that the children desire to stay at school in any case. It does not always require a bribe; it is merely a question of providing assistance to enable the children to stay on.
I submit that there is no reason why children attending special schools should not also be eligible for assistance in this


respect. I cannot see the difference. I make no pretence of being an educationist, but I do not accept the argument advanced that this is not an educational matter. It seems to me that a boy at the age of 15 who stays on at school is getting something towards his keep. If that is so, and if it is necessary to give one parent something towards keeping the boy at school and towards the cost of maintenance—and let us remember that he is not a handicapped boy—then there is a bigger case for giving the parent of a child at a special school something towards the maintenance. I just cannot see what is wrong with our argument. It seems to me to be eminently fair.
All this rubbish served up tonight about the educational aspect does not answer my point. Let us remember that the bursaries are granted by the local education authorities. Even if we accepted this Clause, it would still be those local authorities who would decide whether to give a bursary or not; and these local education authorities must know something about conditions in their own areas. All these profound difficulties about which the hon. Lady talks are not unknown to members of educational committees. There are educational experts on those committees and quite a number of the members have very wide experience and know the difficulties. I should have thought it reasonable at least to have given them the opportunity to be able to award a bursary to a child. I really cannot see why they should not be allowed to do this and I cannot see that there are any other arguments about this.
Perhaps, as my hon. Friend has suggested, the real reason is that the Government will not let Scotland get a little advantage. If that is the answer, then it is about time that the Secretary of State and other Scottish Ministers displayed rather more courage and initiative in facing the cohorts of English Ministers who frown upon these things. It has not been unknown for Scottish Ministers, of both parties—there is nothing political in this—to fight for things against their English colleagues. Sometimes, the English colleagues were not very willing to give them anything, but they have fought, although what they fought for did not obtain in England. Sometimes, they have won a battle—a sort of politi-

cal Bannockburn—with the result that we have in our legislation several advantages over England.
I cannot see why the Scottish Ministers cannot face this matter. It is a small thing which we are discussing, but a human one, and it would not cost vast sums of money We have had an announcement today which will cost about £200 million; but that was dismissed in about ten minutes. Would it cost more than the board which we talked of setting up a little while ago? I cannot think that my proposal would cost any large sum but what this small sum would achieve would be a very desirable thing to do.
The hon. Lady, who I am sure would like to do this, ought to take her courage in her hands. We will back her up. After all, the hon. Lady gets most of her support from this side of the Committeee. Very few of the Tories ever come in to hear her. I have spoken before of the lack of gallantry on the part of Tory Members who allow the hon. Lady to appear here, single-handed, fighting a lane battle against the cohorts of the Opposition. We would support her in her fight against her English colleagues if we were to get this Clause for Scotland. We would even support her in her fight against the Secretary of State—

Mr. Bence: If he were here.

Mr. Willis: —and against her colleagues in the Smoking Room. She can depend upon it that this would be a very worthy battle, whatever effort she might have to make to win it. Why cannot the hon. Lady take her courage in her hands—she is not lacking in courage—and say, "That is really a thing that I should like to give to the Opposition. This is a matter with which I have a great deal of sympathy. I am concerned about these children and we ought to find a way of helping them. This provides an opportunity of doing so, and even if this is not exactly a bright way of achieving this objective, there does not seem to me much wrong with it. It would not create too many difficulties and, therefore, we will accede to the Opposition's request"?
Can the h on. Lady not do that? We make many pleas to the hon. Lady, which she answers nest charmingly but


most unsatisfactorily. She might be forthcoming on this proposed new Clause. It would save a lot of debate. I do not look forward to sitting here till 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning, but if we have got to do so for this worthy cause we shall have to do so. It would save all that. The hon. Lady could be in her bed by 12.30 if she would accept this Clause.

Mr. Ross: And the other Amendments.

Mr. Willis: Of course, we would try to persuade her to accept the other Amendments, but she would get home much earlier than she otherwise would. Therefore, I hope she will accept this Clause. She ought to have made up her mind by now. I ask her to tear up all that paper beside her on the bench and accept this reasonable and humane provision.
At the same time, she might also express her gratitude to the Opposition for their help, their care and legal expertise in drafting a Clause of this character. I draw the hon. Lady's attention to the clarity of the Clause. If only the provisions of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, on which we spend so much time arguing, were framed in such a way as this, what a time it would save. We have set an example in this Clause of how legislation ought to be framed and of how to make a thing clear, explicit and easily understood. I should have thought we deserved some commendation for that, and the hon. Lady might even consider that as one reason for accepting the Clause.
I cannot think of any more reasons at the moment, but before we finish our debate I may think of a few more. I hope that we shall make some impression on the hon. Lady and that ultimately we shall leave the Chamber feeling that we have done something worth while in helping a section of the community which deserves help and which ought to receive the serious consideration of this Committee. I am sure that if we leave tonight in that frame of mind, we shall all sleep very pleasantly, but if we have to sit here till 6 o'clock in the morning our feelings will be of a totally different kind.

12.15 a.m.

Mr. Dalyell: I offer no apology for returning to the subject of the school leaving age in connection with the new Clause. The noble Lady said that the anomaly, if it be one, would be removed when the school leaving age was raised. It was the noble Lady and not I who raised the question of the school leaving age in this connection. She must do one of two things: either admit gracefully—I am not trying to score points—that it was a red herring, or tell us frankly when she and the Scottish Department of Education hope to raise the age in Scotland.
The implication of saying that Crowther is irrelevant is that we in Scotland can take a decision different than that south of the Border as regards the school leaving age. Again, I ask the noble Lady: will she either admit that this argument is irrelevant or tell us what proposals she has for raising the school-leaving age in Scotland?

Question put and negatived.

Bill reported, without Amendment; as amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

Clause 1.—(ESTABLISHMENT OF BOARD TO CONDUCT EXAMINATIONS, ETC.)

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir William Anstruther-Gray): Lady Tweedsmuir. The first Amendment.

Lady Tweedsmuir: Lady Tweedsmuir rose—

Mr. Ross: Would I be in order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, in moving, That further consideration of the Bill be now adjourned?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I have called the noble Lady to move the first Amendment. A later opportunity will, no doubt, arise.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I beg to move, in page 1, line 5, to leave out from the beginning to "a" and to insert: "There shall be".
In Committee, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) proposed that, instead of the Secretary of State being given power to establish an examinations board, the board should be brought into being by the Bill itself. I promised to consider this, and the Amendment gives effect to that proposal in a way which, I hope, is acceptable to the House.

Mr. Ross: We agree with what the noble Lady has said. This was a matter which we brought to her notice in Committee, and I am very glad to have the opportunity of replying to the Amendment she has now moved on Report.
Clause I has "regulations" in every second line. It is regulations rampant. We, as Parliament, could not even be trusted by the Government to take the decision to establish this new examinations board. I am very glad that we have at last got something over. I did not in Committee gain the impression that we had been given such a definite promise as the noble Lady has now translated into legislative action, but we are all the more grateful, even though somewhat surprised.
It does not mean a great deal—let us not deceive ourselves about that. It means that we are to establish a board, without any "mays", "shalls", "wills", and "if the Secretary of State happens to be there at the time and happens to think that it is the right time to do it". it is very safe to do it tonight because the chances are that we will not find the Secretary of State, who is as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Parliament now establishes a board for
conducting examinations for the award of certificate; relating to secondary education and awarding such certificates;
advising the Secretary of State on matters relating to examinations for pupils receiving secondary education.
That is the extent of what we are receiving from this Amendment, and all the other things are still left to be dealt with by regulation.
In other words, we give the right to the Secretary of State, who makes regulations which we can discuss only by praying against them—the hon. Lady refused to change that procedure—and the debate will be very narrow. All other things are left to the good sense or otherwise of the Secretary of State, but at least we have been allowed as the Parliament of Great Britain to take back front the Secretary of State this regulation-making power and boldly we have decided to do it ourselves and ourselves to establish a board for conducting examinations and awarding certificates.
We have to thank the Government for what they have done, but we do not thank them for doing it at the hour at which they have done it. We take very

strong exception to Scottish business being taken after ten o'clock and the man responsible for the business coming on at that time then not being here. If the Secretary of State for Scotland is not prepared to defend Scotland in the Cabinet and we are relegated to this time of night, he should be here. We do not want any more muttering from the Chief Whip of the Tory Party.
I was expressing my delight at this accession of good sense, however belatedly, to the Government and as have welcomed this Amendment, so we hope that they will welcome some of ours.

Mr. Willis: I was not a member of the Standing Committee which considered this Bill and I have not followed all the debates, but I appreciate that this Amendment makes some difference which is all to the good and I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) is justified in thanking the lion. Lady.
However, I wonder whether the words "there shall be" ought not to come before the word "establish" instead of before "a", so that it would then read:
There shall be established—
it would have to be "established" and not "establish"
a board (hereafter in this section referred to as 'the Board') for the following purposes.…".
That would appear to make good legal sense and be better than "there shall be a board", which seems to be rather up in the air, for there is not yet a board. One assumes that it has to be established, and I think that this should read,
There shall be established a Board.…
With great respect to the draftsman. I think that he has put the words in the wrong place, and that the words it is proposed to insert should come before "establish" and not before "a". We say that every education authority shall do such and such a thing, or that such and such a thing shall be done. I think that this should read, "There shall be established", and not "There shall be", "a board …".
This all seems to be very much up in the air. I hope that the legal pundits will consider this again before it goes to another place, and, in the light of their


experience of these matters, decide whether the words "There shall be" should be where I have suggested they ought to be. I think that "ed" should be added to "establish" to make the word "established". This seems to make good drafting sense. I do not think the Amendment makes good drafting sense, and I hope that the noble Lady will ask her draftsman to look at this again before the Bill goes to another place.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Dempsey: I beg to move, in page 1, line 9, after "education", to insert
(including certificates of proficiency in junior secondary schools)".
The purpose of the Amendment is to spotlight the problem of junior school education in Scotland. This type of education seems to be the Cinderella of our educational system. I have been looking at some of the memoranda issued by the Secretary of State for Scotland on our junior secondary schools, and I find that the right hon. Gentleman has been concerned with this problem for some time. Indeed, as far back as 1956, on page 9 of his Report on Education in Scotland, the Secretay of State draws attention to the number of junior secondary pupils who leave school year after year. He says:
Of the 45.405 pupils who left from three-year courses, 20,968, or 46.2 per cent. had completed the course before leaving.
The problem of junior secondary schools is bound up with the question of general secondary school pupil or student certificates and that is why the Amendment proposes that students leaving junior secondary schools should be awarded a certificate of proficiency issued by the Scottish Education Department.
I notice in the same Report that the Secretary of State is at great pains to appeal to the parents of students in the fourth, fifth and sixth year classes to get their children to stay on at school, and that at about that time the Secretary of State issued a pamphlet entitled, "Give Them Their Chance". We should also give junior secondary students their chance.
In pursuit of that objective I have been asking questions about how many junior secondary school students left school during 1960, 1961 and 1962. I

find that during those three years 158,674 students left junior secondary schools without a chance of receiving proficiency certificates.
12.30 a.m.
Later figures indicate that it is conceivable that out of that total 50 per cent. could have qualified for some type of proficiency certificate awarded by the Secretary of State for Scotland. In other words, about 75,000 students never had the chance to leave school the proud possessors of certificates which would have been passports to industry and commerce. Instead, they left with nothing to show, except that one or two local authorities, conscious of this need, issued local education authority certificates on their own volition. If there are local authorities which are so concerned about this problem that they have been induced to issue their own certificates out of a sense of justice towards these students, I should have thought that the Scottish Education Department would have recognised that a certificate should be issued on a national and not a local authority level. I hope therefore that the Amendment will be accepted.
To carry out this purpose, local authorities would have to show some regard to the type of examination which the students would sit, and they cannot do that without knowing the type of curriculum to which the examination would be geared, as arranged by the board. It is a tragedy that our present method of grading students is based on their abilities in English and arithmetic combined. Some students are good at arithmetic and poor at English, but because the examination is based on both they are lost not only to education but to the type of society which we are trying to build. Their talents are not being exploited.
A certificate of the type I have in mind, issued by an examination board, would allow students to specialise in either English or arithmetic and there could be diversification of studies. Students whose talents are now being overlooked, because we insist upon both types of knowledge, could have their excellent qualities brought out in a comprehensive way. I believe that the Secretary of State has overlooked an important aspect of Scottish education in the need to give due recognition to junior secondary


schools and their pupils. I know from experience in Lanarkshire that at the moment great emphasis is laid on both arithmetic and English in the intelligence tests. The experiments which have been carried out by some of the more enthusiastic headmasters have shown that latent talent exists and that it could easily specialise in either of these subjects.
The Amendment spotlights the Cinderella of the Scottish education system and urges that
… certificates of proficiency in junior secondary schools
should be issued in recognition of students' abilities in certain subjects. The Government should insist that these students have three-year courses in secondary education. It is to be regretted that some children do not. Every student should he guaranteed the minimum of three years secondary education.
The board should make sure that the last year is both effective and interesting. Most junior secondary school students merely mark time from the age of 14 to 15, counting the days until they can leave. Thus their last year in school must be made interesting as well as effective. It is time that the Secretary of State tackled this problem, for this age group represents the largest single element in every Scottish school, nearly 70 per cent. of the school population.
These students, who are about to enter industry, commerce, administrative posts and public services should have their lessons in arithmetic, geography, English, history and so on geared so that, in any examination formula, recognition is taken of the type of career the student will follow. We have a great responsibility to these young people and I make no apology for raising this matter in the early hours of the morning. As I have said, the certificate I have in mind would represent a passport, a gateway, to industry, adult life and any other following the student might wish to be engaged in.
It is because I feel very sore at the omission of a recognised Scottish junior secondary certificate of education that I raise this matter. I am not alone in this. A number of worthy headmasters are, of their own volition, trying to overcome this omission. I hope that the hon. Lady can give us some hope that the Government intend to do something.
The Secretary of State and his predecessors have lamented the number of junior secondary school students who have failed to complete the essential minimum of three years secondary education. I believe that last year's figure of completions was lower than the previous year's. If the right hon. Gentleman is so concerned he will surely try to do something in order to imbue the students and their parents with the feeling that there is a future for children in junior secondary schools and that it may be an exciting future if the children take advantage of the courses A certificate of proficiency would enable them to offer themselves with confidence for the duties lying ahead.
We will not build our atomic ships or our affluent society, we will not electrify our railways nor achieve automation without these students. I appeal to the hon. Lady to do something tangible in order to get them to realise that they are not Marking time at these schools but are receiving a first-class education with opportunity for employment and vocation and the exercise of their talents and qualities.
Why should the academic stream look forward to their certificate of education and the ordinary level stream to the ordinary certificate when these pupils have no such reward for their studies to look forward to? Why this discrimination? When making provision for those gifted to use their heads we should also make provision for those gifted to do things with their hands. I am convinced that a certificate of the kind I suggest would harness the initiative of these pupils, encourage the resourcefulness of the teachers and enjoy the good will of the parents.

12.45 a.m.

Mr. Lawson: I thank my hon. Friend for this Amendment although I do not wholly agree with its intent and with all that he said. But I am grateful that it enables us to focus attention on what I consider to be one of the most serious problems in our educational set-up. My hon. Friend emphasised that in his opinion if a junior secondary certificate were attained it would largely rectify the difficulties under which the junior secondary school is functioning. I should like to think that that is true, but I doubt it.


What disturbs me most is that junior secondary education in Scotland is not fulfilling the hopes with which the system was set up. We have a three-way division. When I first entered the House I asked in Grand Committee why so many more boys and girls left the Scottish schools at the first opportunity than was the case in England and Wales, particularly in the South. It was suggested that in the South they could work for the ordinary certificate whereas in Scotland it had to be the full five years certificate. I understand that the ordinary certificate was introduced to induce boys and girls to continue longer at school. The evidence is that there has been a substantial response to the ordinary certificate.
In many parts of Scotland—not every part but certainly in Lanarkshire, which is the largest educational authority in the area—whereas we had a two-way division of school children, the junior and senior secondary schools aiming at the five-year certificate, now we have a three-way division; three, four and five years. The hon. Lady recently gave me a figure of 39 per cent. but I think that she will agree that it is more likely that 69 per cent. are involved; for the largest part of the boys and girls are classified about the age of 12 for junior secondary schools. They are sent to a school which in many cases, and in Lanarkshire the majority of cases, provide only a three-year course.
Nearly half of the children do not even complete the three-year course, but for those who do, there is nothing to follow. If the parents, feeling that the child is a little slow in picking up education, wish to give him the best education their resources will permit and wish him to remain at school for another year or two years, it is a waste of time for the child to continue at school, because he will merely repeat the third year. My hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey), who knows the position much more intimately than I do, talked about marking time in the last year. Not only is that the position but the Bill, unless the Amendment is accepted, will do nothing about it. That is why I am glad that my hon. Friend put the Amendment down.
In Committee we asked where the examination board and the 70 per cent. of our youngsters fitted in. The answer

was that under the Bill at present they did not fit in at all, because the examination board would be concerned only with certificate courses—for possibly 30 per cent. of our boys and girls. Today, junior secondary education—not in all cases; there is evidence of good efforts being made, and some good schools—is a category that we want to get rid of. Therefore, instead of urging the establishment of a junior secondary school certificate, which would require the continuance of these schools, we want to get rid of the segregation that too often provides an inferior education.
I am not talking about inferior education in relation to my authority, but the hon. Lady knows that the 1961 Report of the Department of Education contains a special article on junior secondary schools. She will know that the Report is very critical of these schools, and talks of a teacher shortage, and makes the point, on page 37, that
non-certificate courses as a rule have had to bear far more than a proportionate share of the burden."—
that is, the burden of the shortage of teachers.
Authorities generally feel obliged to give priority to the needs of the pupils following certificate courses, since it is on them that all the professions including the teaching profession, depend for their recruits. Moreover, very many secondary school teachers prefer senior secondary work.
This statement uses moderate language, but it is quite evident that serious deficiencies exist in many junior secondary schools.
I return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Aidrie: if the introduction of this certificate could rectify the difficulty nobody would welcome it more than I, but I doubt whether this will achieve the purpose.

Mr. Dempsey: I am sure that my hon. Friend will bear in mind that it has been argued that in relation to this certificate there would require to be an attractive and effective curriculum to make it a working proposition.

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend has spent a lot of time on this matter, and I am grateful to him for the thought he has put in. My objectives are the same as his, except that I place much less


emphasis than he does on the occupational nature of the education to be given. These children are children whose horizons should be opened up and widened. When a child is not so quick at picking up things, more time should be spent on it, in giving it the same benefit that other children have, to go on at school until they are 18, 19, 20 or 21 years old—

Mr. Speaker: I would ask the hon. Member to remember the issue that is before the House. The giving of more time would not, prima fade, be affected by the inclusion of these certificates in the terms of the Amendment.

Mr. Lawson: The point a: issue is whether or not a certificate of this sort would produce the result that my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie believes it would. Because of this my hon. Friend has to put forward this Amendment. I seriously doubt whether it will produce the results, but am trying to give some of tie reasons why I entertain doubts.
A certificate of this nature might, in fact, result in an over-heavy concentration upon that type of education which can most readily be crammed into children of these ages—that is, a concentration upon job-getting characteristics. I fear that that is what that type of education would result in.
I started by saying that I doubted whether or not this was something we could support and I repeat that, although it is excellent that the mater should be raised by my hon. Friend, I think that when he reflects on the matter he will conclude that, rather than a junior secondary certificate, we should seek the abolition of the junior secondary school.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: At the risk of dividing the burghs of Lanarkshire, I am inclined to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) rather than with my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge (Mr. Dempsey) on this issue of having a junior secondary certificate. Yet, my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge has performed a useful service in calling attention to the needs of these junior secondary pupils, for rather more than two-thirds of the pupils in Scotland are among them, and the figures which the Secretary of State has given in his latest annual Report. "Edu-

cation in Scotland in 1962", are really disturbing so far as the junior secondary children are concerned.
The figures are reasonably encouraging so far as the senior children go in terms of encouraging them to stay on at school; but if we look at the junior secondary children, we find a very different story. Out of 56,703 children who left school last year, the number who remained out of those on three-year courses after reaching the statutory leaving age was only 4,286, which was a decrease of 132 on the previous year. These are deplorable figures and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, if I thought that the establishment of a junior secondary certificate under this board would help to improve the situation in the junior secondary schools, then I should be in favour of it; but I am sure that this is not the general answer.
There is a good deal of wisdom in the latest Report, especially in that junior secondary courses should reflect the importance of "learning by doing", and that, in the words of the Report,
.… these schools will have to avoid the danger that the few certificate pupils may absorb a disproportionate amount of time and attention and may divert the main effort of the schools from their major purpose of providing a suitable education for the rest of their pupils".
But the main issue in the Report is the fact of the percentage of pupils leaving before completing the three-year course. It varies a great deal from one local authority to another, and the Report states
The considerable variation in the percentages in different areas continued, reflecting in some measure the differing practice of Education Authorities regarding the transfer of pupils to secondary education".
In other words, the number of junior secondary children who are not even completing a three-year course is related very closely to the kind of promotion and selection techniques that are used by different local authorities.
1.0 a.m.
I am sure that the main answer to the problem of the boys and girls in junior secondary courses is to bring them into a common school and to make them part of a common secondary course in which children of differing abilities can live alongside each other during the early years of their secondary school life. In that way there could be a good deal


of flexibility in the development of children, and in that way I am sure we should find that substantial numbers—I do not wish to overstate the case—in the junior secondary groups would wish to go on at least to the fourth year to take the ordinary level certificate, and more would wish to go on to take the higher levels of the Scottish certificate of education. I do not think a formal certificate is the answer for many of them. Indeed, it would be unfortunate if we went still further along the road of having a certificate-ridden system of education.
There is one further difficulty which my hon. Friend the Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie would have to face about his Amendment. Even if one admitted that there was some usefulness in having a certificate of education for some of the junior secondary children, I think this examination board, under the Bill, is utterly unsuited for shaping that kind of certificate. This examination board has its own weaknesses, that we have discussed in relation to its function of dealing with the present Scottish certificate of education, with its highly academic bent. This board, with its highly academic bias, would be unsuited to dealing with the problem which my hon. Friend has put before us.

Mr. Bence: It is regrettable that I, too, must join with my hon. Friends in not agreeing with the principle of giving powers to this board to include a certificate of proficiency in junior secondary schools. I dislike intensely this separation of the children at 11 years of age into senior secondary and junior secondary schools. I hope that the time is not far away when the junior secondary school will disappear completely and when we shall have comprehensive schools and grammar schools. I do not want to abolish grammar schools, but I should like more comprehensive education, and I much prefer the comprehensive school.
To separate children at 11-plus is shocking. What exactly does the proficiency certificate mean? When we are educating a child from 11 to 15 years of age the process surely is one of opening the child's mind to develop his capacity to learn. We are not giving him some academic or technical equipment. We are giving him some intellectual equipment. The process of learning is just beginning.

In the modern world, children—and they are very mature between 11 and 15 years of age nowadays—need more and more education. We have this board which will be giving a certificate at ordinary level, I presume, and at advanced level. Now here is another one, a proficiency certificate. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) that we do not want too many certificates. I am appalled at the idea of turning out children at 14, 15 or 16 years of age with a certificate as a sort of insignia of accomplishment. Certificates and even scrolls of degrees are not always an accurate measure of the capacity, intellectual, moral or otherwise, of the holder. There is more to education than that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) spoke about the training of children to use their hands if they are not suited or attracted to an academic education, the junior secondary schools being concerned more with processes and doing things. This can be done in a comprehensive school. There is no reason why the ability to do practical things should not be inculcated in children whatever stream they follow in a comprehensive school. I went to a grammar school in South Wales where we did woodwork and we even worked machines, and there are grammar schools throughout the United Kingdom with all sorts of equipment where children can learn these skills. Why should not children go to a school where all streams of education are catered for in the same institution, rather than have this frightful system which causes parents to feel that their child is a failure if he or she has not gone to the senior secondary school?
I regret that attitude very much, and I always tell parents that it is a quite wrong approach. Different children have different talents and qualities.
I should not like to think that any boy or girl went to a school where the main purpose of education at the age of 11 or 12 was merely the vocational one of using the hands and training for some craft or industrial occupation. That is too early in life to specialise a child's education in that way. Apprenticeship or training at a commercial or technical college is the stage where specialisation of that kind begins, at the age of 16, 17 or 18.
I hope to see the day when all children can stay on at school until 18. One of the vows I took—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I share the hope that the hon. Member will survive, but, at this stage, I must ask him to direct his observations to the Amendment.

Mr. Bence: I had gone a little astray, Mr. Speaker, but I am still dealing with the certificate of proficiency. I do not like the word "proficiency" here because it conveys to me the idea of being proficient in some art, craft or industrial process. I do not want education at this age to be vocational training. It should be a far deeper thing than that.
It is a wrong approach to ascribe to the junior secondary school the purpose of being an institution where boys and girls who fail to qualify for senior secondary school may undergo a three-year course of a limited specialised kind with a view to gaining at the end a proficiency certificate. I hope that all hon. Members will come to the view that the sooner we get rid of the junior secondary school and establish the comprehensive school parallel to the grammar school the better.

Mr. Dalyell: My hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) has done the House a service by moving this Amendment. I am fairly and squarely behind my hon. Friend, but before I say why, I think that it is in order to praise the many Scottish local authorities who have been aware of this problem and who have been tackling it with considerable energy. As one who was fortunate enough to be a guest of the Scottish directors of education at their annual dinner, I can say that all sorts of interesting things are happening and that it ill behoves us not to rake note of what educationists are doing.
I support my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie and not my hon. Friends with whom I normally agree, the hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) and the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence). But there is no need for hon. Members opposite to get too happy about what they might regard as a disagreement on this side of the House, because whereas we are having a discussion about education, in which there might be two opinions about important matters, it is significant

that there has not been a single contribution from Conservative back benchers.

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend will appreciate that hon. Members opposite have always contracted out of the educational system which we are discussing. They have never sent, and have no intention of sending, their children to State schools, so that this matter is of no interest to them whatsoever.

Mr. Dalyell: Any disagreement between us is on an education basis about which there might be two views. I put forward my view because of the rather reluctant feeling that a subject which is unexamined is regarded by all and sundry as unimportant. One can dispute this, but it is an educational assumption which we have to make.
I ask my hon. Friends who are critical of my hon. Friend the Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie whether a pupil who is not working to achieve something definite is at all stretched. I believe that whatever their level of attainment, pupils should be stretched to capacity. If they are not stretched, they lose concentration. To some extent, one can confuse concentration and cramming, but I make the assumption, which may be disputed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East, whose views I respect. that our young people between 13 and 15—without laying oneself open to the charge of being Mr. Gradgrind, from Dickens—should have some knowledge of English grammar and of mathematics.
It also seems to me that anyone in the 1980s who does not have a working knowledge of physics will not be able to claim to be educated. I am not suggesting that they should all be at the Nobel Prize level—that would be unrealistic—but, nevertheless, without a knowledge of physics, one cannot understand geology or much of chemistry, or a great deal of rather ordinary jobs in industry and, in the 1980s, one would not be able to understand much of biology and medicine.
1,15 a.m.
It may be said that this is an esoteric argument; that the teaching of physics is only for those who go to senior secondary schools, but because of the work that is being done on the simplification of the subject, junior secondary school pupils can get some working


knowledge of the subject, and they can do this if they are working towards the kind of certificate which my hon. Friend is suggesting should be awarded to them.
I might have had some hesitation about supporting the Amendment had the "O" level certificate in Scotland been achieving what it was intended to achieve, but during the last five years the "O" level has become more and more a matter of academic interest. When it was first mooted, it was suggested that between 40 and 45 per cent. of the pupils would take the "O" level examination. We do not know the exact figure, but it is about 20 per cent. Therefore, by no stretch of the imagination can the "O" level certificate be regarded as the answer to the problem which is rightly worrying my hon. Friend.
Another point to be considered is the morale of the teachers. It is all very well for my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East to argue in terms of a wider education and a deeper understanding of the situation, but if a teacher is working towards something that is rather vague, it is very easy for him to get bored rather quickly, and I do not apologise for saying that examinations, although they may be superficially criticised by many teachers, produce a spur to do something definite. When a teacher, or anyone else, has an object in mind, he is more enthusiastic and knows where he is going.
Another factor to consider is the morale of the pupils. It is all very well to say that we should not expect junior secondary pupils with I.Q.s of 90 minus to be burdened with examinations, but this is not how they see the world, and perhaps I.Q. values will change in the years to come. The reaction of these pupils may well be to think that they are not as good as others if they do not have to pass examinations. I have heard pupils actually asking to be allowed to take examinations.

Mr. Dempsey: I am sure that my hon. Friend will be interested to know that the Lanarkshire County Council Education Authority makes provision for these technical examinations and issues about 1,200 certificates per year to junior secondary students.

Mr. Dalyelf: That confirms the line of conversation that I had with the Director of the Lanarkshire County Council Education Authority only four days ago. and at the beginning of my speech I praised what certain authorities were doing, and Lanarkshire County Council was one of them.
If pupils ask to be allowed to take examinations, the request may not be entirely frivolous. The trouble is that we look at this problem in terms of the adult world, and to an adult it is fantastic that anybody should ask to be allowed to take an examination.
We make the mistake of seeing these problems entirely in terms of how an adult sees them, but at 13 or 14 years of age one wants to do what other people are doing. If it is considered right that the top of the school should have examinations, children's minds work in such a way that they want to do what is done by the people they look up to.
We shall depend more and more on television teaching. It is here to stay. Some of us would say that not to use television teaching is like not using the written word hundreds of years after Caxton. It is as bad as that. The danger in television teaching is that it is woolly, sloppy and regarded as something additional. This is no use. How else are we to have first-class teaching of mathematics? If television teaching is regarded not as a luxury but as an integrated part of the course, we must find out to what extent pupils listen. We must find out how much is absorbed. and whether pupils listen with intelligence to new methods of television teaching. Language laboratories for many schools are not quite so fantastic in the present atmosphere of educational thought, nor are the teaching machines as demonstrated recently at a conference of the Association of Directors of Education.
This is not a question of certificates but of the examinations which lead up to the issuing of certificates. I am not especially interested in the certificate as such. One is interested in a series of properly conducted examinations which lead up to a certificate at regular intervals. I profoundly respect the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson). He


may say that this is a Gradgrindish attitude, but if one can reply in terms of a child wishing order in his teaching, I would remind hon. Members that a brilliant Member of this House sent his nine-year old daughter to Dartington Hall where he thought she would have a wide intellectual education. What happened? The girl came back after the first term and said, "Daddy, I want you to send me somewhere where they tell me what to do."
I should hate it if an undergraduate were told what to do. My basic criticism of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East and my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East is that they are confusing the attitude which they would wish to see among 16, 17 and 18 year-olds at school and among undergraduates concerning freedom of thought with the attitude of these 12, 13 and 14-year olds who are mentally and biologically different and for whom different and often completely contrasting provisions are necessary.

Lady Tweedsmuir: We are indebted to the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) for having given rise, through the medium of his Amendment, to what has been a fascinating discussion. It is clear that there have been as varied views expressed in the early hours of this morning as there are on the subject of examinations in the educational world, for there has been an enormous amount of discussion and disagreement on whether or not there should be some form of certificate of proficiency or an examination for those who have completed a three-year secondary course.
The hon. Member for Coatbridge and Aidrie seemed to imply that nothing had been done on the subject, but he will, no doubt, have noted the tribute which was paid by his hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) to the work, experiment and thought which has been and is going on in the best of our schools. Apart from that, as hon. Members will recall, my right hon. Friend the Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay), when Secretary of State, appointed a working party consisting of inspectors, directors of education, teachers and others to consider this very subject. Hon. Members may be interested in the terms of refer-

ence given to that working party. They were:
To consider means of improving the arrangements for coordinating the later stages of secondary courses and the earlier stages of courses of vocational further education, with particular reference to the educational needs, both vocational and general, of those young people who either do not follow or do not complete courses leading to the Scottish certificate of Education.
The report of that working party has only recently been received and it will be published as soon as we get it from the printers. I am sure that it will be of extreme interest to all hon. Members who have taken part in tonight's debate.
In the meantime, to return to the Amendment, I can assure the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie that it is not necessary for him to amend the Bill in the way he proposes. At present, as we said upstairs in Committee, the intention is that the examination board should be concerned, on the executive side, only with running the Scottish Certificate of Education examination. It is for that reason that the board is constituted in the way we have discussed—rather on the academic side—but the enabling power in subsection (1) is expresed quite widely because it refers to secondary education, which includes junior secondary education.
If it was decided at some future time that there should be some form of examination at the end of the three-year period and that the board should run it, the board could be differently constituted to take these problems into account. The real question which has been engaging our attention tonight is what is the kind of secondary education most suitable for the less academic pupil. I agree that this is one of the most important subjects we must consider, both inside and outside the House. All who are concerned with Scottish education are bound to consider whether or not a national, third-year examination is a god idea. At first sight, speaking personally, I doubt whether it would be. I am inclined to the view of hon. Members who do not favour it, but that is not the point here. But if the final decision is to introduce one, the Bill as at present drafted would allow for that. We thank the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie for raising this important subject, but hope that he will withdraw his Amendment.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: Would a special examination board be allowed to be set up, or special membership arranged, to deal with junior secondary education?

Lady Tweedsmuir: We have discussed the constitution of the board and I do not think that as envisaged at present it would be particularly suitable for a junior secondary education examination, if it was decided to have one. However, we discussed the executive arrangements and how, to a large extent, these would be carried out by subject committees. On those committees there could be all kinds of different people who would be intimately connected with education for these children. In that sense that would be perfectly possible.

1.30 a.m.

Mr. Ross: Everyone is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) for giving us the opportunity to say lots of things, relevant or otherwise, on the purpose he has in mind. That purpose is to make it the responsibility of the examination board to make provision with respect to the awards of certificates of proficiency in junior secondary schools. But it is obviously not the body to do it. It is dominated by the hierarchy of education, the people who know least about these schools. That is a weakness.
Much of what has been said is not a fair reflection of the opinions particularly among teachers in these schools. I have discussed this with teachers and one cannot convince them that some such certificate would not have considerable advantage in maintaining the interest and individual effort of the children.
This is symptomatic of the dissatisfaction with our present three-year course. It points to a failure of that course and of the teachers. It may not be the fault of the teachers because they can only teach in accordance with the curriculum laid down. It may be the fault of the headmasters. It may be that one difficulty is that we have a habit of taking a man who has spent a lifetime teaching Greek and making him headmaster of a junior secondary school, which is Greek to him. We tend to make these schools pale shadows of the senior secondary school—quite unnecessarily so.
From its inception I was a strong supporter of the junior secondary school,

but I warn my hon. Friend that as soon as we get an external examination—as it would be if conducted by this board—it would mean the same thing done in every junior secondary school. The examination would mould what would be taught. If it was a limited examination then what was taught would be limited.
There would still be pupils—perhaps a considerable number—who would not be presented for it or be able to be presented for it. The freedom we had in the junior secondary schools by not being trammelled in looking towards an external examination, and through the education within a school not being under outside control, was something desirable and a challenge to Scottish education and educationists.
My recollection is that in Committee we were told that now the inspectorate was handing over to the board all the work which had been piling up relating to the higher and lower levels and that it would be able to devote more time to trying to put right the defects of the junior secondary schools. It has waited far too long.
It is all very well for the hon. Lady to say that much is going on. Let her go to any town in Scotland, and she will find more dissatisfaction caused by the segregation into junior and senior secondary schools than by anything else. The children, having started badly, have a sense of failure. But we have failed to offer a wide enough curriculum to find something which will interest the child for a lifetime. We have too ready a facility for confusing education with examinations and culture with education.
My hon. Friend does not want to write into the Statute a junior secondary school which is segregated. Moreover, I do not think that there is anything to stop any school from issuing certificates. The local authorities can do it. They can set their own standards within schools and even in respect of a single subject. That is one of the great changes made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) he wiped out the group in respect of the Scottish certificate of education. The child used not to receive a certificate unless he had succeeded in an adequate group, but my right hon. Friend said that this was unfair, for the children had studied and


had achieved something and should all get a certificate, even if they had succeeded in only one subject in the group or in what would have been regarded as an inadequate number in the group.
I fear the danger that in accepting the Amendment we should write the junior secondary school into the Statute—which I do not want—and hand the examination over to an outside body—which would be had. This very fact has held back the scientific approach and development in Scottish senior secondary schools.

Mr. Dalyell: Is my hon. Friend happy that sufficient prestige accrues to the certificate of an individual school to make it worth while?

Mr. Ross: I know of schools which have built up a great record on the basis of their own achievements. It is open to every school to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North knows of schools which, despite the fact that they are junior secondary schools, have a better reputation than senior secondary schools. We have a new one in Ayr—Belmont High, which is building up a tremendous record and has broken down the barrier caused by people who want their children to go to a so-called better school. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise) wants to address the House he should stand up.

Mr. A. R. Wise: I was addressing the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis).

Mr. Ross: The usual method is to stand up. Some of these schools have the right approach to education. The challenge is being partly met. I do not want to see those schools being crippled by an all-embracing examination. Perhaps some useful ideas will come of the working party's report.
Has the hon. Lady read the Report on the curriculum for secondary schools? If so, I ask her to go back to the Department and ask what has been done in the schools. She will probably find that little has been done. One of the dissatisfactions which have led to the Amendment being put down is the inability, in the first years, when a mistake is discovered in relation to segregation, to translate children from one school to another. The Report states that every

child in secondary education in Scotland should have the same course in the first year. Let the hon. Lady rind out to how many cases that applies. She will find that it amounts to very few. She might even find that some of the headmasters who were members of the working party have not applied this principle in their own schools. That is another of the dissatisfactions.
I have a feeling that the reason for my hon. Friend's Amendment was a desire to express a dissatisfaction about the things that now exist in respect of junior secondary schools. I hope that the hon. Lady will examine the possibility of doing something to remove this dissatisfaction, perhaps by some sort of idea such as that put forward, or a development of it. But it would be far better to appreciate exactly how long we have lived with this, with growing dissatisfaction, and exactly what are the feelings of aimlessness of parents and children—and that is failure, in education.
I could say a lot more, but we are getting on to the subject of education rather than that of the Amendment—although the two are tied up. I regret that we have not had any Unionist interested in Scottish education. The trouble is that hon. Members opposite have never been in a Scottish school, except by invitation. I hope that we shall address ourselves seriously to this matter, and that the hon. Lady will inform herself of the facts and the feelings that exist among parents and children, and will try to grope her way towards some solution. Failing that, I hope that she will join us in returning to the tradition of Scottish education—the comprehensive school.
I do not want my hon. Friend to be disheartened by the way in which we have approached the Amendment. He will no doubt take great satisfaction from the fact that he has been able to arouse this interest in the subject at this time. I hope that in the circumstances he will see his way to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

1.45 a.m.

Mr. Willis: I have heard most of the debate. There is no doubt that we have opened up a fascinating subject. So far we have had some first-class speeches. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Wise) does not agree. He


does not understand the Scottish educational system. I hope that he will enter the debate and give us his views upon it. At least he will be doing more than his Scottish colleagues who apparently have no views at all. [Interruption.] We are not filibustering. Unfortunately, we have to discuss this important matter at this hour of the morning. Nevertheless, I thought that the debate had been of a high level and one which I have found to be tremendously interesting. I appreciated, for example, the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). They were very good, although I did not necessarily accept them, because it seems to me mat without going into the more rarified dissertations concerning this matter, children at school like to have a definite target. I think there is a feeling that they like to have purpose given to their education and it is true to say, from my experience in my own constituency, that a very large number of children at junior schools do not think there is any purpose at all.
They feel that they are being kept there because a Government said some time ago that they had to stay there.

Mr. Dalyell: Will my hon. Friend agree that what is needed is a series of short-term goals?

Mr. Willis: Yes; not simply one, but a series of steps which seem to give some meaning to education, Therefore, I was not altogether happy about this proposal of my hon. Friend.
There is another proposal, and that is that when the child leaves school, he or she likes to have something to show, and employers like children to have something. I recall that I spent a considerable time trying to obtain for men leaving the Armed Forces certificates indicating exactly what they could do in order to help them in their efforts to get jobs. People employing a child want to know what that child has been doing. It is already stated that he has been to a secondary school, but that is not very helpful to an employer by itself. Therefore, it seems that the boy or girl should have something which indicates exactly what he or she is proficient in and what are their aptitudes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) men-

tioned one or two subjects, but there are others. I am not particularly keen on the examination system, as such, but from this point of view we might have some indication about what a child has done; the subjects in which he or she is proficient, with any qualifications calling for special comment. I should not have thought it impossible to combine that with the setting of targets for different children in different respects.

Mr. Dalyell: Would my hon. Friend accept that, provided the targets are set according to ability, and that means however low they are set,,they would give that rising confidence which would create the rising personality which my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) so rightly stressed?

Mr. Willis: Yes. It is interesting to notice that the only intelligent discussion is on this side of the Committee. Although a number of differences of opinion have been expressed on this side. I think that in reality we are trying to get the same thing. We are feeling towards it in different ways. Whether or not it could be achieved by this Amendment I would not like to say. Probably I am not sufficiently qualified to deter mine that question.
I noticed what my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock said about the type of examination board which would have to sign the certificate, and it seems to me to be rather too remote from the children to understand the sort of thing which would be required to be done. Therefore, I am not too happy about accepting the Amendment, although I agree with its purpose.
One of the arguments that has been used against accepting the Amendment is that we would probably delay the introduction of the comprehensive school, and that we would follow the present pattern. I wonder whether that argument is altogether true. The fact is that we have got junior secondary schools, whether we like it or not. I am in favour of the introduction of the comprehensive schools; nevertheless, there are thousands of children at junior secondary schools at present. Until such time as we can make this change—and there might be several difficulties in the way of bringing it about rapidly; it might take a year or two—we have to ask ourselves whether this


would be an improvement. I have great doubts about whether this is the right sort of board, but if it is there might be an improvement.
I was not altogether impressed by the argument about the junior secondary school. It was something like the argument of the Under-Secretary who said that if we wait till the school leaving age is raised to 16 the problem will be solved. The same sort of argument is being used on this side of the Committee, that we must have the junior secondary school and it will solve this problem In the same way as we do not accept the argument in relation to the hon. Lady's case, I do not accept it in relation to my hon. Friend's case. Therefore, on balance, think I might be inclined to support my hon. Friend. I do not know whether he is pressing this Amendment to a Division. [Interruption.] Apparently one hon. Member opposite has something to say.

Mr. Wise: I only said that I bet he was not pressing it to a Division.

Mr. Willis: I am glad we have had one speech from the benches opposite—a very short speech and not very informative, either. It did not display any great interest in the subject under discussion, and probably was out of order. Nevertheless, at least we have had a speech from the benches opposite, and I commend the hon. Gentleman for that. I draw his example to the attention of other Scottish Members opposite. There is only one present, of course, but, after all, it is not unknown for a Permanent Parliamentary Secretary to speak. I commend the example to him, and he can give us his views on this important matter. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not at 2 o'clock in the morning."] There is no prescribed time for going to bed, to use the language of a learned judge. I do not see why we should not stay here for another hour or two yet.
The balance of argument is fairly even, I think, but I come down on the side of my hon. Friend the Member for Coat-bridge and Airdrie. If he does press the matter to a Division, I shall follow him into the Lobby.

Mr. Dempsey: In view of the statement by the Under-Secretary of State that we are about to have a report on the subject, and having regard to the first-class speech of my hon. Friend the Mem-

ber for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), who rightly guessed that the purpose of the Amendment was to express dissatisfaction with the existing junior secondary school, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I beg to move, in page 2, line 2, to leave out from "in" to "confer" in line 3 and to insert:
regulations under this section.
(2) Regulations shall be made under this section by the Secretary of State, and such regulations shall".
This Amendment is consequential on the Amendment in page 1, line 5, which deleted the original provision, making clear that any reference in the Clause to regulations means regulations made by the Secretary of State.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 2, line 5, leave out "said purposes" and insert:
purposes referred to in subsection (1) of this section—[Lady Tweedimuir.]

Mr. Ross: I beg to move, in page 2, line 43, to leave out "fixed by him" and to insert:
calculated in accordance with a formula reached".
We touched earlier on the attitude of the Government to local authorities in respect of what ate euphemistically called contributions, which is a strange way of describing an exaction in which the naked ruthlessness of the Government in regard to education is quite arrogantly displayed. There is no "may" or "from time to time" here, no tenderness of language about calculations, agreements, and the rest. It is provided that:
Every education authority shall, at such times as may be fixed by the Secretary of State, contribute to the funds of the Board such sums as may be fixed by him.
This led us into the realms of derivation of language and we discovered that the word "fix" was Anglo-Saxon. I do not know whether the hon. Lady has consulted a dictionary and discovered that she was wrong. If there is any dispute about it, the thing to do is to get rid of the word.

Mr. Willis: I do not quite follow this argument. Do I understand my hon. Friend to say that if we have an Anglo-Saxon word in a Hill we must replace it?

2.0 a.m.

Mr. Ross: No. It would take far too long to explain. That was purely a comment on something that happened in Committee.
As we have the subsection at the moment, what a local authority has to pay is to be fixed by the Secretary of State. We suggest that at least there should be some sort of formula and proper consultation with the local authorities about reaching that formula, so that the calculation would be predictable and the local authorities would know exactly what they were expected to pay. We are not asking for much and we could have gone much further and asked for agreement, but we assume that in consultation with the local authorities, the Secretary of State would heed the sense of fairness in respect of the contributions paid under an agreed formula.
I do not know how the hon. Lady can possibly refuse this Amendment. It softens the language. We have recently dealt with a formula related to the Exchequer equalisation grant and in that Bill we had Amendments in Clause after Clause. If they can still think in the Scottish Office after coping with the Exchequer equalisation grant, I am sure they can work out some simple formula in respect of local authority contributions towards the maintenance and development of this new examination board.
I shall not trouble the hon. Lady with arithmetic and how much they would have to pay in the first case and the second case and in 1981. I am interested only in the acceptance of the principle that the Secretary of State shall not fix something, but that he should calculate it in accordance with a formula discussed with the local authorities beforehand and that that should remain the formula for further calculations of the annual contributions, if annual they are to be, and that we should get rid of this dictatorial attitude of "Mr. Fixit" in St. Andrew's House—he is probably away fixing us tonight. Let us get rid of these words which should not have been there in the first place and have contributions calculated in accordance with a formula reached after consultation with the local authorities.

Mr. Bence: I support the Amendment. The Secretary of State proposes to fix the times at which these payments

will be made without consultation with anybody, and he also proposes to fix the amounts to be paid without consulting anybody. No formula is provided for working out the amounts to be paid, and we do not even know whether all local authorities will be required to pay the same amount.
The whole subsection is very loosely drafted indeed. I was not a Member of the Standing Committee which considered the Bill, but I should certainly have supported any attempt to reconstruct this subsection, because our experience during the last ten years has taught us that when the Secretary of State fixes anything he does not do it out of consideration for the interests of Scotland, but because the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told him what to do.
When I see a phrase like this, I become suspicious and expect to see it accompanied by the phrase, "with the consent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer". I hope that my hon. Friend will not be dissuaded from pressing the Government to accept the Amendment. We should ensure that provision is made for a formula to be worked out for the amounts to be paid. It is wrong that local authorities should be asked to provide money without having a chance to discuss the amount that they should provide, and I hope that my hon. Friend intends to ensure that this formula is fully debated in the House.

Mr. Dalyell: It may be said that those who support the Amendment are guilty of triviality, of quibbling, but I detect in this sort of wording a tendency towards an authoritarian attiude which does not help to bring people of the right calibre into the teaching profession.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence), I am a member of the Standing Committee which is considering the Children and Young Persons Bill, and was therefore not able to attend the earlier discussions on this Bill in Committee upstairs. I am appalled at some of the drafting that has been served up to us. It is ironic that we should be discussing education. I am sure that no teacher would accept the drafting that we see on pages 2 and 3 of the Bill. I defy my hon. Member to understand at first, third or even tenth reading some of the English


in this document. I draw attention in particular to page 3—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but he is going too far in page 3. The Amendment we are dealing with applies to the bottom of page 2.

Mr. Dalyell: It was a happy opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East.

Mr. Willis: I see that hon. Members are coming into the Chamber and I notice looks of intense interest in the faces of hon. Members on the Government benches as they have strolled in. Their alertness and great interest in the Bill are obvious. I feel that out of sheer generosity and the goodness of my heart I should give them once again an opportunity to make a contribution to the debate. I see that an hon. Member opposite is armed with a great brief. I hope that we shall have the benefit of it before we part this morning.
I was glad to hear my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) talking about this subsection being authoritarian. That was precisely the word I had put down to use, though I was going to say "arbitrary and authoritarian". It is an arbitrary power to give to the Secretary of State to allocate the liability of different local authorities. Let hon. Members imagine what would happen if we tried to do this with the Exchequer equalisation grant or the general grant. The House would not tolerate it for a moment, but just because the sum involved here is not one of millions but of hundreds of thousand of pounds we find this position.

Mr. Dalyell: Does not my hon. Friend agree that this betrays an attitude of mind that is hostile to proper relationships in the profession?

Mr. Willis: It is quite alien to the attitude of mind that should prevail in the teaching profession. Incidentally, I notice quite an influx of hon. Members. If we can carry on until four or five o'clock we may have a full House. We are getting on very well. It was an uphill struggle for some time, but we are doing better now.
Local authorities like to know what their liabilities will be. They must know whether they are to estimate correctly.

The City Treasurer of Edinburgh is constantly lecturing town council committees on the need to carry out estimating, since otherwise he finds it difficult to fix the rates. Edinburgh might have to contribute £20,000 under the Bill. It could mean the addition of a fraction of a penny on the rates. The same might happen to Glasgow. To help local authorities to see how they stand there should be a formula—naturally, reached in discussion with the local authorities—to show them how this liability is shared between the respective education authorities.
2.15 a.m.
We should help the local authorities instead of treating them like school children. The words in the Clause are obscure and to some extent nonsense.

Mr. Bence: Would not my hon. Friend agree that it is objectionable that the sums should be fixed by "him"—that is, the Secretary of State? Might we not one day have a lady Secretary of State, and not a "him"?

Mr. Willis: I presume that, in that case, the word "him" would cover "her" as well.

Mr. Bence: I am not so sure.

Mr. Willis: I think that it is legally customary.
The Clause opens the door to corruption and abuse. I do not say that this will happen, but we might have a Secretary of State who is anxious to assist his "blue-eyed boys" on a Tory town council of Edinburgh. He might say, We will not fix too high a contribution for these boys." I hope that this sort of thing will never happen, but it could happen as the Clause is now drafted. Wishing to be fair, I will give another example. A Labour Secretary of State might say the same about a Labour town council.

Mr. Bence: I hope that my hon. Friend will give a Liberal example.

Mr. Willis: There are many other examples one could give. I am saying that the possibility of abuse exists and not that it will happen. This is all the more reason why we should try to avoid such possibilities when we are legislating.
In view of the way in which my hon. Friend introduced the Amendment, with his customary lucidity, humour, cogency—

Mr. Bence: Brevity?

Mr. Willis: —and brevity, I trust that the Under-Secretary will now accept it. I am sorry that the noble Lady is sitting on the Government Front Bench. I would rather have had the Leader of the House sitting there, for he is the one who is responsible for inflicting this important subject upon us at this hour of the morning. It is unfair that he should be able to get out of having to be present. I hope that the noble Lady will make some concession to the Opposition for its very great interest in the Bill. This Amendment would, after all, be helpful to the local authorities.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian made the powerful point that the whole tenor of this provision was out of keeping with our education ideals. We should not introduce this sort of arbitrary procedure. We should maintain standards. The Government have done a great deal to lower standards generally, but it would be out of order to discuss that now. But I hope that on this narrow point they will accept this sensible Amendment.
I can only assume that the grants will not be frequent, otherwise the Government would not be establishing this procedure. Presumably, they would not have introduced the formula is the grants were to be annual. I hope that the noble Lady in her knowledge—I was about to suggest in her wisdom—will accept the Amendment.

Lady Tweedsmuir: Despite the fact that I should like to encourage the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) at this hour of the morning—perhaps I might have put that differently—I must resist the Amendment.
Before dealing specifically with the Amendment, perhaps I may explain how we envisage that the education authority contributions will be fixed if the Bill is passed in its present form. The first part of the process will be to get from the board each autumn a budget for the following year. This will give the basis on which the total amount to be provided from public funds will be determined. We already do this for teacher training colleges, central institutions and many other bodies.
The second stage will be to consult the local authority associations. The con-

sultation will be concerned with two separate, though closely linked, issues. First, how much in total the education authorities should contribute to the board in the following year. Secondly, how much of the total should be contributed by each separate education authority. I sincerely hope that we shall be able to get complete agreement with the associations on both issues. The Amendment would replace the words which provide that the Secretary of State shall fix the contributions by new words which refer to a formula. It is quite probable that we shall agree with the local authority associations a formula for dividing the total contributions between the separate education authorities. For example, the total amount needed may be proportional to the number of pupils taking the examination or to the population of the county, and that formula or part of the formula could, if desired, remain unchanged from year to year.
On the other hand, we ought to remember that the budgetary requirements of the board are almost certain to vary from year to year, and therefore we cannot agree to a fixed formula of so-much-a-head which remains unchanged. The general basis of the formula might be constant, but the amount to be contributed per head, if this is to be the basis of the calculation, would have to be fixed each year according to the total sum to be produced. This is an exercise which is frequently undertaken, for example in fixing education authority contributions to teacher-training colleges and approved schools.
The authorities have agreed to the principle of having the arrangement as it is in the Bill. It is for that reason that I cannot accept the Amendment.

Amendment negatived.

Clause 4.-(MEMBERSHIP OF EDUCATION COMMIT-FEES AND SUB-COMMITTEES.)

Mr. James Bennett: I beg to move, in line 2, to leave out "a teacher".
I have no intention of speaking at length, which may relieve the minds of some hon. Members. I believe that some of my hon. Friends disagree with me on the point which I am about to raise and which is simple; the Bill confers a very special privilege on teachers as a profession. Nothing that I say should


be taken as reflecting on the ability of teachers to serve on a local authority. Many teachers serve on such authorities, but when they do I would rather that they were not appointed but elected. If the argument is that teachers, by virtue of their profession, can bring expert knowledge to education, there is no reason why we should stop at teachers or discuss such an important principle in isolation as we are doing now. Once this is accepted there is no reason why other employees of a local authority, with expert knowledge in other spheres of industry, should not be appointed to the authority.
To my mind, this opens up avenues which we should be well advised to consider very carefully. I appreciate the desirability of having teachers, with the knowledge which they possess, on these bodies, but I am not convinced that it is necessary for them to be appointed to education committees in order that we should receive that benefit. We have the directors and deputy directors and the joint consultative machinery which normally operates whereby the expert knowledge which we hope to gain by appointing teachers to education committees is already available.
If we introduce this principle, no one knows where it will stop. No doubt we shall he told that this principle operates in England. I have never accepted that what is good for England is equally good for Scotland. I have had some knowledge of local government for a long period, and I have never seen any reason why some members should be appointed to committees rather than having to seek election as ordinary members have to do.
2.30 a.m.
We must also remember that if we appoint teachers to serve on education committees they will be adjudicating on issues, financial and otherwise, without being accountable to the electors. That is something that we should frown upon. I am sorry that an issue such as this must be debated on this Clause; I would rather see it discussed as a matter of principle, when we could debate the advisability of any employee of a local authority being allowed to serve on that local authority. But on this Clause we are forced to consider this matter in splendid isolation.
I foresee that if this goes through, recognising that it may not be obligatory for local authorities, the door will be open and pressures will be brought to bear to nominate teachers for service on education committees. We know that their activities will not be confined to the parent committee, but that they will also serve on sub-committees, and it is clear that teachers should not serve on local authority sub-committees dealing with employment or salaries. Nevertheless, the fact they serve on the parent body gives them a full right to take part in a discussion of all decisions relative to any aspect of education. Although this point would appear to be a simple issue it involves a vital principle.
It is within my knowledge, as a member of a local authority, that occasions have arisen in the past where members have been debarred from sitting on specific committees because they had a particular interest in the industry concerned. No one quarrelled with such a decision, because it was recognised that it was a safeguard But apparently teachers are to be excluded from that provision, and will be allowed to serve only on committees in which they have a vested or specific interest. I find it difficult to reconcile these two points of view.
In the passing of the Clause we are opening the door wide, not to abuses but to tremendous pressures from other employees that they should also enjoy the privilege that we are proposing to extend to teachers. I suggest that if we give teachers this privilege we shall find it very difficult to refuse such pressures. I counsel the noble Lady to think carefully on this issue. It is not as simple as it appears.
I do not dispute the fact that teachers have a contribution to make in education, but this is not the best way in which to allow them to make it. The dangers inherent in this proposal far outweigh any benefit that might accrue from it.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: I hope that the fears of my hon. Friend that the proposals concerning the representation of teachers on education committees will not work out well will prove to be unfounded. The proposal in the Bill does not go so far as I would like, but it is the product of a working party which contained a number


of local education authority representatives, as well as of the teachers, and the central Government, and it was an agreed proposal that it should be made discretionary. It was agreed by those diverse people that it should prove to be a useful experiment and I feel that this would be a useful method of advance and should help the teachers in their search for self-esteem.
This is not under discussion tonight, but the more modest proposal in the Bill does enjoy the support of the local authority sphere. There are Scottish local authorities which have been making interesting experiments in terms of teacher representation. For example, in Sutherland, there have been teachers sitting as assessors on education committees and I am told that none of my hon. Friend's fears are well founded. In Aberdeenshire, machinery has been set up for teacher representation, and it has worked well. I do not agree with my hon. Friends in what they have said about wider forms of representation on local authorities.
As I said during the Committee stage of the Bill, one ought to make membership of local authorities, and not merely of education committees, generally available to employees of local authorities and then apply the normal interest rule to which my hon. Friend refers. If there is a rule about builders, surely it ought to apply to bus drivers.

Mr. J. Bennett: I must keep myself to the Bill. I was referring to the wider representation of employees of local authorities on their own authorities.

Mr. Thomson: The reason for doing this in the field of education is really the same reason as that whereby doctors are widely represented in the administration of the National Health Service, but the effect of this teacher representation can be greatly overstated. It is merely a contribution, as I have said, towards creating a greater sense of self-respect within the teaching profession itself, a realisation of the fact that they have a contribution to make and if this is good enough for the medical profession in terms of the National Health Service, I think that it should be available for teachers and for local authority employees.

Mr. Willis: I think that this Clause is quite out of place in the Bill. A Clause dealing with representation on local authorities, and the changing of the representation on those authorities, ought to be in a Bill dealing with constitutional matters and the representation of the people, and not tucked away in a Bill which presumes to deal with education.
We have listened to an argument about children in special schools. It was then pointed out that the Bill was not the appropriate place for them. The Bill, in my submission, is not appropriate for this clause, but it is in the Bill and we seek, in view of the fact that it is in, to extend it from the teacher to all those employed by an education authority. That is what the Amendment seeks to do.
I cannot see any reason why a teacher should have any more right to sit on an education committee than, say, janitors, or the staff of education committee offices. These people have contributions to make. Janitors know a lot about the running of schools, the facilities and conveniences of schools, and probably could give the architects and the committee a lot of advice in the preparation of plans for schools.
If one profession thinks that it has a special contribution to make, I do not see why another one should not do so. Why should not office staffs be represented? They could say quite a lot about the organisation of the work of education committees. I can think of quite a lot of different people who would have useful contributions to make, and the arguments for one set of employees are the same for others.
Why should teachers have special priority? It might be argued—and I can understand the argument—that they can contribute a great deal from the point of view of the administration of schools, the content of the curricula, and so on, and give advice on the general set-up. I have no doubt that their advice would be valuable to the committee. But, after all, there are already people co-opted on to education committees who are re-regarded as educationists with special experience and knowledge of education. Therefore, it seems to me that if the knowledge is already there, there is no


special case for teachers being on these committees.
I would agree that there is probably a good case for the examination of the whole of our local government procedure in relation to elections and the people who are qualified to stand for election, so that a number of people who are prevented from standing for election might do so. I would prefer that to be done, rather than do what is proposed to be done here and extend the principle of co-option to people because, for some reason, we think that they have special knowledge. I am not in favour of that. In fact, I once introduced into the House a Bill designed to take the voting powers from people serving on local authorities because they had not been elected.
There is a big case for having the teachers almost out of this category of being disqualified for election. I am not sure, but that seems to me to be the better approach rather than this. However, if we are to have this approach, cannot see why it must be confined to one particular group of persons. If the case is strong enough for doing it in this way, it is strong enough to be applied to more than this group. I support the Amendment.

2.45 a.m.

Mr. Dalyell: There are many widely differing views on this subject among people connected with education in Scotland, but there would be unanimity on one point, if nothing else, that they would be horrified to see not a single Scottish Tory back bench Member present during our debate on a subject which has been discussed and discussed again throughout Scotland.

Mr. Lawson: My hon. Friend will be aware that this fact will be widely reported in the Press. The Scottish Press always takes great notice of the absence of hon. Members opposite.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member will be aware also that, whether it be reported in the Press or not, the Question before the House is whether we leave out the words "a teacher".

Mr. Dalyell: I should have preferred the debate to be on broader lines.
As regards the Amendment itself, it is right that the Clause should be permissive chiefly because there is no neces-

sity today, so it seems, to have uniformity throughout all local authorities. What may be highly desirable, for instance, in the situation referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) might appear quite different to other authorities.
I am not bunking the question, which is a tricky one. Which teachers will do the representation? There is a curious physical problem here, which, perhaps, those who wish it to be mandatory have not faced. How are teachers to be able to attend meetings once or, sometimes, twice a week? Is it not a fact that the only people who can have the necessary amount of time off, without massive interruption of their work, are headmasters? Are we sure that teachers want to be represented on education committes only by headmasters? This is a problem which must be faced. It is not that one wishes to draw a firm conclusion. There is room for flexibility. Perhaps we should watch the example of what happens in those places which take advantage of the Clause and see what happens.
It is important that there should he a permissive power and we should not decide at on no account shall teachers be represented in this way. It is important because energies must be released, and the mere feeling of participating in decisions is of value to teachers. If we have a profession which, rightly or wrongly, suspects that it has little say m what is going on, we may have a rather discontented profession. So far as the Clause tends to release the energies of teachers and give them a feeling that they are participating in decisions which are germane to their profession, I welcome it.

Mr. Bence: When I first had material on this subject sent to me, I had some sympathy with the objective of the Scot-fish teachers to be represented on education committees, but on reading it, and thinking about it a great deal, I became less enthusiastic. My understanding may be wrong, but I believe that one of the many teachers employed by a local authority would be appointed to the committee, presumably by agreement between the E.I.S. and the authority concerned, As the E.I.S. is a professional body, very much like a trade union, the committee would have a teachers' representative. I understand that representatives of the


E.I.S. serve on consultative committees in Scottish education authorities, so that the teachers play their part in those authorities, which is one channel through which they can play the part suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell).

Mr. G. M. Thomson: It was never the suggestion that representatives of the teachers' own trade union should sit on these education committees. With his own trade union experience, my hon. Friend will be familiar with the distinction which I wish to make. What was suggested was that teachers should be appointed as independent members of the education committee, being full members of that committee subject to any restrictions of interest such as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Bridgeton (Mr. J.Bennett) mentioned. This would have nothing to do with normal methods of trade union consultation.

Mr. Bence: This deals with the points about which I am concerned. Out of the hundreds in a local authority, one teacher is to be appointed. By whom? Is he to be appointed by the local authority, the town clerk, the county clerk, or the education committee? With whom would the person making the appointment consult about the choice of teacher? It might be the local branch of the E.I.S. This seems to be the difficulty. I immediately thought of the street lighting committee and the E.T.U. suggesting that one of its electricians should sit on that committee. That may be grossly exaggerated, but that is the sort of difficulty which I have found.
I have always felt that school teachers and doctors and nurses and many others under whose influence we put our children have a part to play administratively, but we should not clutter up our committees—"clutter" is a bad word and I should not have used it. We do not want to fill our democratically elected institutions with non-elected members. We already have a small number of non-elected members of otherwise democratic bodies in Scotland and we do not want more. Once the door to that sort of thing is opened, all sorts of dangers can arise.
I suppose that I should retain an open mind and do a little more study, but from what I have heard tonight I feel inclined to support the Amendment.

However, if as a result of the many contributions which are yet to come—unfortunately, mostly from the side of the House but still absolutely first class—I am convinced that the Amendment is undesirable, I might support my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson). My mind is not yet made up.

Lady Tweedsmuir: I hope that I shall be able to help the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) to make up his mind. I have listened with considerable interest to the arguments put forward by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Bridgeton (Mr. Bennett) and I understand why he dislikes the proposals in Clause 4 and the reasons why he now proposes that it should be widened instead of, as I think he suggested in the Standing Committee, deleted from the Bill. The hon. Gentleman was supported by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) and we had exactly the opposite view expressed by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson), who would have liked the Clause to have gone much further.
I think that the points were very well put by the hon. Member for Dundee, East, because he reminded us that the proposals in the Bill are the result of the report of a working party which considered specifically the appointment of teachers to education committees. The working party considered all the views, which were just as varied as those expressed tonight, and it found the views pretty evenly balanced.
The working party thought very carefully about the wisdom of allowing any relaxation of the principle that a local authority employee should not be a member of the council under which he serves or of any of its committees. which was the point worrying the hon. Member for Bridgeton. But this was not the working party's only consideration, and its principal conclusion is very clear and specific, and it was unanimous.
It came to the view that
it should be made possible for serving teachers to be included by an education authority, entirely at the discretion of that authority
and it went on to say:
This would meet the claims advanced in favour of change which would be of sufficiently limited a nature to avoid any undermining of the essential principles of local government.


I hope that this view, taken by a working party which consisted of people of very different views, will persuade the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) and the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East that to allow this discretion is not really such a terrible thing to do. We do not suggest that the Clause should apply to employees other than teachers, because this report was confined entirely to the question of teachers. I think that to allow this at the discretion of a local authority is to do something which might improve relations between local authorities and the teaching professions, and any measure, however small, which will help in this way will be of benefit, and I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his Amendment.

Mr. Dalyell: I did not say that it was a terrible thing to do. I argued in favour of it being permissive.

Mr. Ross: I am at a disadvantage, because I was a teacher. I know a little about them, and about local government, too. I have never understood why the teachers place such importance on this aspect of raising their status.
Whatever anyone else says, this is a further breach of the principle of local democracy which is based on elections, and these took place yesterday. If we had had a proposal to take away from teachers, or from anyone else, the right to stand for election in the areas in which they taught, or if the Government had come forward with the proposal that instead of setting up a working party to go narrowly into the point that had been raised by the teachers they would set up one to go into the whole question of local authority employees, I think that the noble Lady would have had far more support from hon. Members on both sides of the House.
3.0 a.m.
Teachers are not the only people who have been concerned about this, and the teachers' concern has not been related to their right to be elected and to sit on the county council. They have sought privilege. They sought the easy way. They have sought appointment and co-option. But firemen, certainly in Scotland, have been ruled as ineligible for election in a burgh, despite the fact that the employing authority is a joint fire authority. It would have been only fair

to all the people affected if we had had a much wider inquiry.
If we have an inquiry into the position of teachers and we select sixteen people to carry it out, I am not very surprised at the result when 12 of the 16 happen to be or to have been teachers. This applies even to the local authority people. One sees after the names of many of them the magic letters F.E.I.S., which do not mean, as the wee boy said, "French, English, Irish and Scotch", but fellowship of the Educational Institute of Scotland. A person who has that honorary degree might tend to be appreciative of the claims of the Educational Institute of Scotland. One can also count the assessors, the people from St. Andrew's House who had been members of the inspectorate, I expect, and before that had been teachers, and one would find that the committee was not the kind of committee which I should have thought would have led people to believe that it was a group of men and women who had no bias one way or another.
I think that the Government have given way to these demands by the teachers only because it was the one easiest to satisfy and it cost the least and did not mean very much. I am sorry about this, because I think that it will cause some embarrassment to the Government and the authorities, for other people will want exactly the same privilege. If the teachers have something special to offer to an education authority, have not the police to their relevant authority or lamp-lighters to a department of a local authority? Any local authority which wants special help from teachers out of their special knowledge can easily obtain it by establishing a liaison committee. It has been done. I cannot understand my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) falling for this proposal.

Mr. J. Bennett: It is the practice that when a member of a local authority has a pecuniary interest he must declare it and then he does not vote. Can my hon. Friend say whether teachers appointed to an education committee or sub-committee will have the full voting rights enjoyed by other members despite the fact that they have vested interest in the operations of the committee? Does my hon. Friend consider that this is implicit in the Clause?

Mr. Ross: This is one of the embarrassments of this position. They may be members of teachers' staffing committees, and so on. There are many committees and other bodies, the members of which could give valuable advice.
It must be remembered that only a limited number of people will be appointed. A number of local authority committees are composed of only 10 members. Others have just over 30. This was revealed in a report published recently. I cannot recall the name of it. It is not late enough in the morning for my memory to be sufficiently jogged. I may remember it by 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.
It will mean that from the whole profession in a teaching area only one person will be selected. To be the right person he must have central specialised knowledge, administrative capacity and be endowed with all sorts of other qualities if he is adequately to represent his area. One representative might be endowed with special qualities of administration and local government, but I can assure hon. Members that most of these sort of teachers are already standing for local council elections and will, therefore, be barred from membership. It would be interesting to know whether the education interests of Scotland are prepared to allow teachers who have been elected to councils to be appointed.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: I do not think that there is any question of the Educational Institute of Scotland nominating these people. They will be appointed by education committees in the same way as representatives of churches and other people interested in education are appointed. There will, no doubt, be consultations with the Institute.

Mr. Ross: I merely said that I would like to know whether the Institute would want co-option on to the education authority of teachers of those who have already been elected to local councils. For example, we have at least two teachers in Kilmarnock—enlightened, Labour men—who, because of their public spirit, have been elected to the Labour council. Both are headmasters. Under the present rules they can serve and while one of them may be the treasurer of the town he cannot be on the authority. It would be interesting to know

whether the Institute has any views on the co-option of people who have been elected. It may be that not only in the teaching profession, but in other aspects of local administration people could give good service; and the Amendment would help them to do so. There is every reason, if we go this far, to give it to other members of education authorities.
The logic of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Bridgeton (Mr. Bennett) was impeccable and made the position clear. I do not see how anyone can fault it. I am only surprised that the noble Lady did not accept it. I am sure that she knows the defects of her case about the working party. She hopes saying what she did about the brilliant contributions from teachers in Aberdeenshire that they will forget the pledges she did not redeem about superannuation in 1954.
I hope that the Government have listened carefully to what has been said and that they realise that in this disqualification lies the real cause of all the trouble, and that more and more people are no longer eligible to stand—and that we are desperately short of people of public mind and spirit who would serve the community well if they could. The sooner we get down to seeing how far we can eliminate the present disqualifications in many categories, the better we shall serve the community, raising the status not only of the teaching profession but of local government and administration as well. In view of the discussion, I am sure that my hon. Friend will not want to put his Amendment to the test.

Mr. J. Bennett: I would be dishonest if I said I was happy with this Clause. I am not in the least happy about it. I want to see good and workable legislation. But in view of the fact that this is permissive, and having great respect for the intelligence of the membership of local authorities, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill read the Third time and passed

Orders of the Day — ADJOURNMENT

Resolved, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pym.]

Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes past Three o'clock a.m.